Zambia’s National AI Strategy, launched in November 2024, outlines the country’s ambition to become a regional leader in applying AI for sustainable development. It states explicitly its aspirations to “position Zambia as a regional hub for ‘AI for development’ innovation,” and calls for AI adoption across six key areas, including: healthcare, agriculture, education, mining, climate, and public services.
Grounded in RIA’s Just AI Framework of Inquiry, this analysis of Zambia’s National AI Strategy considers how the country’s AI vision aims to uphold the full spectrum of human rights while embedding principles of care, justice, and equity throughout the AI life cycle. It focuses on four core inquiries, specifically: sensitivity to structural inequality; human rights primacy; sustainability; and democratic governance.
The analysis written by Diana Nyakundi and Pria Chetty finds that the Strategy positions AI not only as a tool for economic growth, but as a pathway to transform public service delivery, improve livelihoods, and create a more just future. For example, by recommending a multi-institutional governance framework to guide AI implementation and oversight, alongside a National AI Council and sector-specific Technical Working Groups, the Strategy’s delineated roles and responsibilities create a reasonable basis for accountable and transparent AI coordination and deployment.
However, its impact and sustainability depend on the inclusion of marginalised communities as co-creators of AI solutions. Although the Strategy’s production involved consultative development with multiple stakeholders, a lack of meaningful inclusion of marginalised voices or underrepresented groups underscores the need to more deeply embed rights-based, participatory governance as an essential safeguard of accountability and a means to uphold long-term public interest. Further, it invites a strengthened conceptualisation of sustainability, one which connects environmental goals to social development, particularly concerning labour market disruptions and equitable benefit-sharing in sectors like agriculture or mining.
By using the Just AI lens, the analysis examines whether Zambia’s AI vision advances a future that is not only innovative but also inclusive, accountable, and restorative.
