Africa must end the AI extraction economy now
- Geci Karuri-Sebina, Farai Mlambo, Beatrice Bonami, Kholiswa Malindini, Angella Ndaka
To secure our future, Africa needs a strategic pivot—a move from extraction to agency. This shift must be understood through a powerful domestic lens.
Africa stands at a critical crossroads in the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) economy. If the continent fails to act with conviction, it risks repeating a familiar, extractive pattern: being positioned as a consumer and a supplier of raw data while global powers and major corporations consolidate control over the algorithms and infrastructure that shape the future.
This is not a theoretical debate. AI is not a side issue; it is an economic governance challenge that will determine who captures value, who holds power, and whose interests technology ultimately serves for decades to come.
Read the as published on the Mail & Guardian website.