Across Africa and the East African region, AI governance is in transition, moving from soft law commitments and strategy documents toward harder regulatory frameworks. But this shift is not happening uniformly. Different sectors and communities are interacting with AI in fundamentally different ways, and the case for sector-specific regulation is becoming harder to ignore.
Tanzania’s focus on sector-specific policymaking for AI in education and healthcare is a useful example. It raises the question whether those policy choices were evidence-driven, and whether we are jumping the gun in AI regulation, rather than regulating what we are actually using. Similarly, Uganda is in the process of developing a national AI Strategy, aimed at delineating key priority sectors for investments, including agriculture, health, education and government services.
Kenya’s recently released AI Bill raises similar questions, with critics stating that the Bill fails to consider the baseline regarding Kenya’s AI adoption, in terms of extent of adoption, the sectors involved, and how deeply AI is embedded in society. Nevertheless, the Bill presents a valuable opportunity to raise and examine these questions, which will inform more intentional regulatory efforts across the continent.
This webinar brings together legal practitioners, technologists and regional policy actors to interrogate that gap from the inside.