In the last five years, investment in the research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) has taken a new and urgent turn in several countries¹ as its many possibilities and advantages become increasingly apparent. The heady predictions made years back² now seem within reach as AI looks set to make a radical difference in innumerable aspects of our lives, from work³ to the management of healthcare⁴ and the relentless drive to build driverless vehicles.⁵ Those sectors give us an idea why there seems to be consensus among analysts that AI will in future have a monumental influence on which economies become dominant and which ones flounder,⁶ all this shaped by the network effects that are known to secure a dominant perch for early birds.⁷

Network effects, which refers to the idea that the more users a product has the more users it will gain, has been particularly instrumental in the growth of today’s largest technological companies. ‘Data network effects’ is closely connected: essentially the idea that the more people using a tool, the more data is generated and leveraged and the better the tool becomes.⁸ Many AI startups chase the benefits of network and data network effects because competitors are bound to have a difficult time adding any value once one gets ahead. This point has significant bearing on the future of African countries since the economic gap between countries in Africa and countries in other parts of the world will very likely widen significantly if African countries do not build competitive AI ecosystems.

Given how important data is to the advancement of AI, it is no surprise that coordinated collection of big data has assumed a scale never seen before. Indeed, the collection of everything from health records and social security numbers to social media posts and search-engine queries has become inescapable.⁹ The risk such collection of personal data poses for republican freedom in a liberal society is significant. As expected, many countries have responded to this problem by enacting data protection law. The standard bearer has for a while been the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires privacy by design. In establishing their own data privacy regulation, many African countries followed the GDPR model. Some of these countries include South Africa,¹⁰ Egypt,¹¹ Kenya,¹² Mauritius,¹³ Chad,¹⁴ Ghana,¹⁵ Lesotho¹⁶ and Togo.¹⁷ Out of them, the countries that will serve as case studies for this research will be Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.

While there exist studies that have tracked the growth/ assessed the usefulness of data protection regulation around Africa,¹⁸ none investigate how data protection regulation in African countries is affecting its AI ecosystem/ is likely to affect its AI ecosystem. This study aims to determine the perceived effect of this regulation is having on AI innovation. The report details findings of the perceived effect of data minimization and data non – repurposing laws on AI innovation. The study reached 158 respondents with most of the respondents (151) working in Kenya, contributing to 95.57% of the total respondents while the remaining 4.43% (7) coming from other African countries. In general, respondents believed that these laws would hinder multiple aspects of AI innovation in one manner or another.

The report provides greater details on the study and its findings.

1 Government of the United Kingdom, Press Release, ‘Funding for 84 million euros for artificial intelligence and robotics research and smart energy innovation announced’ 8 November 2017; Mathieu Rosemain and Michel Rose, ‘France to spend $1.8 billion on AI to compete with US, China’ Reuters, March 29 2018; State of European Technology Report, 30 November 2017; Daniel Araya, ‘Who will lead in the age of Artificial Intelligence’ Forbes, January 1 2019; Ralf Llanasas, ‘A look at the US/ China battle for AI leadership’ Design News, June 7 2019; Paul Mozur, ‘Beijing wants AI to be made in China by 2030’ New York Times, July 20 2017; National Science Foundation, Press Statement 18–005, ‘Statement on Artificial Intelligence for American Industry’ May 10 2018.

2 See Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1990, page 425–449.

3 Paul R Daugherty and H James Wilson, Human + Machina: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, 2018, pages 23 to 76.

4 Eric Topol, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again, Basic Books, New York, 2019, page 59–67.

5 Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2016, page 85–125.

6 PWC estimates that AI will add nearly 15.7 trillion USD to the global economy by 2030, all of which will be unevenly split between the countries in the lead. See https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2017/ai-to-drive-gdp-gains-of-15_7-trillion-with-productivity-personalisation-improvements.html (last seen October 22 2019).

7 Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age, Penguin Press, New York, 2019, page 270.

8 Alexandre Golfaloneri ‘Why is it hard to build AI and data network effects’ Towards Data Science, January 14 2020.

9 Louise Matsakis ‘The Wired guide to your personal data (and who is using it)’ Wired, February 15 2019.

10 Chapter 3 Part A, Protection of Personal Information Act, Act 4 of 2013.

11 Personal Data Protection Law, July 2020, No. 151/2020.

12 Data Protection Act (Act No. 24 of 2019).

13 The Data Protection Act, 22 December 2017, Act No. 20 of 2017.

14 Protection of Personal Data Act, 10 February 2015, act 007/PR/2015.

15 Data Protection Act, 2012, Act 843.

16 Data Protection Act, 22 February 2012, Act No. 5 of 2012.

17 Law Relating to the Protection of Personal Data, 29 October 2019, Law No. 2019-014.

18 See for example: Privacy International ‘2020 is a crucial year for data protection in Africa’ https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3390/2020-crucial-year-fight-data-protection-africa (last accessed May 20 2021) and Idris Ademu and Adedeji Adeniran ‘Assessing Data Protection and Privacy in Africa’ in the report ‘Assessing Digitization and Data Governance Issues in Africa’ Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2020.