Introduction

The transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate global progress towards attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through driving innovation in sectors like climate action, education, agriculture, and economic inclusion has led to its rapid global adoption.¹ For Africa, the home of the youngest and fastest growing population with rapid adoption of AI, AI has the power to advance development and help craft AI systems that are inclusive and sustainable.² Kenya’s Jacaranda Health uses AI-driven tools to expand maternal and child health access, directly supporting SDG3.³ Google’s AI-powered Flood forecasting system is now active in over 40 African countries, covering around 460 million people in the continent. It offers advanced warning, enhances disaster management and ensures food security across the continent.⁴

However, the continent continues to face risks such as infrastructure gaps, digital divide, data sovereignty and governance issues and exclusion, with AI threatening to amplify the challenges and widen inequalities.⁵ Africa’s AI economy is growing with startups benefiting from Google’s $50 million Africa Investment funds, but its readiness index average is only 26.91, showing the urgent need for investment in infrastructure, digital skills and leverage on strategic partnerships to empower the harnessing of AI for sustainable and inclusive growth.⁶

Africa’s talent gap is not inevitable and remains a policy and partnership challenge that begs for bold and locally owned solutions.⁷ The Hamburg Declaration on Responsible AI for the SDGs adopted at the Hamburg Sustainability conference in June 2025, responds to most of the above challenges faced by most Global South countries.⁸ It emphasises Sustainable human-centric and rights-based AI governance.⁹ Beyond the adoption of the Declaration, Africa is able to lead in defining AI governance that prioritises human rights, inclusivity and sustainability, aligning closely with the Declaration’s commitments.

The Hamburg Declaration on Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) for (SDGs)

The Declaration came into place after extensive multi-stakeholder consultations that were led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).¹⁰ It is the first declaration focused on harnessing AI for the advancement of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The rise in unethical use, inequality, environmental impacts and data privacy concerns led to the Declaration for actionable commitments and a unified vision to ensure AI benefits, especially for marginalised and vulnerable populations, by aligning AI with inclusivity, sustainability and human rights.¹¹

What the principles and commitments of the Declaration mean for Africa’s AI Governance

The Declaration is focused on five pillars aligning closely with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and resonates with Africa’s unique challenges and priorities. These five pillars are people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. The Declaration also outlines several commitments to ensure the achievement of the principles ensuring they do not remain aspirational.¹²

People

The pillar prioritises respect, promotion and protection of human rights, safety, human dignity, inclusion and gender equality in the life cycle of AI systems from design, development and deployment of AI systems.¹³ There are three elements for this pillar. First, a Human rights-based and human-centric approach throughout the AI cycle. AI must respect human rights and guarantee fairness, transparency and accountability and non-discrimination. This entails upholding privacy rights, promoting cultural diversity and actively mitigating detrimental biases that amplify existing inequalities against women, children and marginalised communities rather than exacerbate them.¹⁴

Secondly, for effective and ethical AI adoption, Equity and inclusive participation remain crucial. The pillar highlights that AI benefits ought to be accessible and beneficial to all as digital public goods through public consultation and AI literacy, especially for women, children, persons with disability, indigenous people, minorities, marginalised and underserved populations. This involvement can be in research roles and AI development to guarantee equitable and local economic opportunities.¹⁵ With only 38% of Africa’s population using the internet as of 2024 and the high cost of connectivity disproportionately affecting low-income and marginalised communities, the inclusive approach aligns with Africa’s ongoing efforts to bridge the digital divide and ensure equitable economic opportunities.¹⁶

Lastly, trust, safety and protection from harm remain paramount with the requirement of safeguards aligned to international human rights and humanitarian law including integrity, transparency, redress, clear accounting and risk assessment mechanisms such as testing and auditing to prevent exploitation and social harms.¹⁷ Local and marginalised communities ought to be involved in risk assessment and AI governance to ensure respect of human rights in the AI cycle.

Africa remains at a crossroads with over 60% of its population under 25, making it economically strategic. However, only 10% of the population occupy high skilled jobs, with around 60% of the workers in low skilled jobs.¹⁸ Women remain underrepresented in the digital ecosystem contributing to only 30% of the tech work across Africa compared to around 50% in developed economies.¹⁹ A report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other African tech analyses indicate that women hold less than 8% CEO positions and less than 15% executive roles in tech firms in Africa.²⁰ The declaration commits to advancing inclusive and responsible AI that aligns with international human rights frameworks to safeguard human rights by ensuring people remain at the center of AI governance. For Africa, a shift to have people at the centre of AI can transform its economic growth while ensuring no one is left behind. Most African countries struggle with digital skills and readiness, with progress across Africa remaining uneven.²¹ The 2025 Africa AI talent Readiness Index indicated a sharp digital skills gap and uneven AI readiness across Africa, with South Africa at 52.15 and all other countries falling below 27, reflecting the challenges Africa experiences in preparedness.²²

The African Union AI strategy commits to human-centric AI mirroring the Hamburg declaration principle on people and grounding AI decisions in promoting people’s participation.²³ The national AI strategies also mirror this principle, for instance, Kenya’s AI strategy also commits to a human-centric AI approach by incorporating citizen participation and ensuring gender equality.²⁴ Despite these frameworks, exclusion persists especially for women, youths and marginalised communities across the continent due to uneven digital infrastructure. The declaration offers a practical commitment for participatory policy development and investment in AI literacy to ensure inclusion. It strengthens the existing commitments and frameworks by offering internationally acceptable frameworks centred on human rights at all stages. While the national strategies remain aspirational, the declaration demands risk assessment and clear accountability mechanisms offering practical safeguards. Emphasis on inclusive participation and digital literacy offers a roadmap for Africa to expand its involvement and close the existing skills gaps. The declaration also calls for digital public goods accessibility to complement Africa’s efforts for global cooperation and funding aligned with SDGs.²⁵

Planet

The Declaration commits to align AI development and use with global climate goals such as the Paris Agreement by promoting sustainable solutions and minimising AI’s environmental impact.²⁶ This includes Green Compute done by designing energy efficient AI systems, the use of sustainable resources and recycling e-waste. AI should drive climate action through supporting mitigation, adaptation and circular economics through local innovation for developing nations. Through protection against AI’s environmental footprints and risk throughout its value chain, the declaration demands transparency and accountability in AI’s environmental impact. To ensure environmental sustainability, the key commitment of the declaration is to improve resource efficiency and promote the use of sustainable and renewable energy for AI. In order to meet the planet principle, this will reduce carbon emissions in the AI lifecycle and use AI to support climate action.²⁷

For Africa, using AI to increase climate resilience is not a luxury but a survival tactic. Africa continues to be vulnerable to climate shock.²⁸ Startups across Africa are deploying AI for climate resilience. Examples include the Amini AI’s weather intelligent Agriculture platform in Kenya, as well as the Google real time flood forecast across over 40 African countries.²⁹ The AU AI strategy also calls for AI for Climate action, echoing the Hamburg declaration principle that focuses on the planet.³⁰ Africa should prioritise green compute and renewable data centres and ensure AI for circular economies through waste management and use of renewable energy. Inadequate data centres and unreliable compute power remain barriers to sustainable AI adoption, considering the potential of green compute in the advancement of sustainable growth models in Africa. .³¹

Prosperity

The declaration commits to promoting inclusive economic and social development through opportunities that foster local innovation and minimise economic disparities. This involves sustainable AI and data infrastructure to support economic growth, such as by investment in connectivity, computing resources and infrastructure to support underserved language groups and communities. It commits to empowering economic growth and local innovation for local AI ecosystems and empowering SMEs and startups through mentorship to ensure industrial transformation and drive economic resilience. It also focuses on skill development and workforce readiness through training citizens with AI skills through education to ensure broad participation.³² To ensure prosperity, the Declaration commits to advancing AI for inclusive economic growth by supporting local innovation and developing AI ecosystems around the globe. Additionally, the declaration commits to ensuring equitable access to AI education and skills with a focus on women, children and marginalised communities.³³

Africa promises to be a hub for inclusive and locally driven AI innovation that models the prosperity of the globe, and not just in a catch up game. As per the Mastercard 2025 report, the AI market in Africa is projected to grow from 4.5 billion in 2025 to 16.5 billion in 2030 while creating over 230 million digital jobs across Africa by 2030.³⁴ This can be achieved through sharing prosperity broadly calling for inclusive innovation. Currently 83% of AI start-up funding across Africa remains across only four countries being Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt.³⁵ This disparity is as a result of uneven local capacity and infrastructure. The AU AI strategy and the national strategies such as the Kenyan strategy explicitly prioritise economic inclusion and local computing infrastructure, aligning closely with the Declaration’s call for fostering local startups.³⁶ While Africa’s frameworks highlight the need for economic inclusion, the Hamburg Declaration offers a global and right-based foundation with the commitment to equitable access to AI education and sustainable investment in AI infrastructure. It stresses the importance of access for underserved and marginalised communities. Through adopting the Declaration’s commitments, Africa can rely on multistakeholder investments, global partnerships and accountability safeguards to ensure prosperity in the diverse economies.

4. Peace

Noting the relationship between peace and sustainable Development, the Declaration commits to ensuring that AI systems do not disrupt peace or undermine the rule of law.³⁷ This is through avoiding information manipulation, misinformation and disinformation. It calls for the need for preserving and promoting information integrity through robust safeguards and tracking to combat deep fakes, disinformation and algorithm manipulation for critical areas such as news, healthcare, elections and judicial systems.³⁸ Additionally, AI must safeguard public trust and promote safe digital spaces that foster cooperation, social cohesion, and prevent amplifying online violence and discrimination especially against women, girls, children and marginalised communities.³⁹ To achieve this principle, the Declaration commits to implement safeguards against AI misuse to ensure information integrity and ensure digital literacy for secure, transparent and accountable systems. AI is a double-edged sword capable of being used for both division and social cohesion.⁴⁰ Disinformation, misinformation, algorithmic manipulation and privacy risks remain great risks as digital penetration expands across Africa.⁴¹ To ensure information integrity and public trust, robust frameworks and independent oversight remain critical. Africa however, faces significant challenges in enforcing its frameworks due to the lack of infrastructure and content moderation capacity. The Declaration’s peace pillar echoes Africa’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) by calling for strong information integrity, inclusive oversight and safeguards against deepfakes ⁴² Africa should focus on developing trustworthy AI systems that are resistant to manipulation through strengthening its digital literacy and establishing independent oversight bodies.

Partnership

The final pillar of the Declaration is the commitment to strengthen inclusive, multi-stakeholder international partnerships to foster a globally inclusive AI ecosystem upholding equity, innovation opportunities and shared responsibilities aligned to global sustainable development objectives. Multi-stakeholder engagement focuses on amplifying voices from emerging markets and developing economies to leverage existing or new initiatives for resource pooling, such as infrastructure, computing power, models to scale AI innovation and capacity building.

The pillar also calls for open access and AI as digital public goods allowing open source, interoperability and adherence to international standards and available open licenses. It also calls for knowledge sharing and mutual learning through research, promoting cooperation and knowledge resources to foster mutual learning and interoperability of global standards and approaches. The declaration commits to advance collaboration globally through inclusive partnerships to ensure responsible data sharing and AI solutions as digital public goods. Africa’s digital success rests on global collaboration that respects its needs and ambitions.⁴³ The Declaration highlights the importance of partnership emphasising open source and global knowledge sharing similar to the AU AI strategy and the calls for south-south collaboration, open licensing and the creation of pan African AI research networks.⁴⁴ Africa has prioritised multistakeholder partnerships as the backbone of digital transformation, however, on the flip side, over one thousand African AI start up relying on foreign models over exposing the continent to sovereignty and privacy risks.⁴⁵ Existing resources and infrastructure across Africa are insufficient to meet its needs. Africa needs new data centres, shared compute power and trust standards developed with Africa’s realities and aspirations as their center to ensure safe AI.⁴⁶

Conclusion

The Declaration is a global call for action and also a roadmap for responsible AI across the globe. It highlights the urgent need for a practical and actionable roadmap for responsible AI to ensure protection of human rights, promotion of sustainability and inclusive growth. This aligns closely with Africa’s aspiration of a digitally empowered, inclusive and equitable future.

Africa remains at the heart of the declaration’s vision. Its unique development and infrastructural challenges, and existing opportunities, make ethical AI adoption critical for the achievement of SDGs. The declaration’s emphasis on digital inclusion, sustainable development and data sovereignty resonates with the African Union AI strategy and the specific national strategies across Africa. For Africa, the Declaration offers an opportunity to harness AI responsibly, leverage global partnerships and resources to boost local innovation and equitable, ethical AI access. It highlights the need for Africa to invest in infrastructure and develop robust frameworks to ensure AI ensures inclusive growth and sustainable development across the continent.

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