11 minute read

State of the laws and regulations governing AI in Africa: Are government authorities enforcing and monitoring compliance?

As the world ushers in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – which is characterized by increasingly blurred lines between the digital, biological, and physical worlds, regulators are coming to grips with the opportunities of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and the Internet of Things These and other emerging technologies offer exciting possibilities; in theory, they might allow us to galvanize unprecedented socio-economic change and democratise access to services such as the Internet, education and healthcare AI is poised to impact Africa in several ways It has been hailed by many as a transformative force for African societies, promising to reduce inequality, alleviate poverty, and improve access to public services like health and education But the deployment of these powerful technologies is still in a fledgling phase on the continent and there are significant challenges to overcome in building capacity to fully harness their potential In this interview, Maha Jouini (Head, Africa Centre for AI and Digital Technology), shares unique insights on the current state of the laws and regulations governing AI in Africa and how AI-related data protection and privacy issues are being addressed

Q: Which areas of AI development are you most excited about and which do you think will offer the greatest opportunities?

Advertisement

First of all AI is to Mimic Human intelligence by machine Intelligence is faculty proper to human being, where we as human are able to make decisions which suit us best even in complexes situation. AI has many areas of development such as Deep learning, Natural language processing, Computer Vision, Robotics, Automation and so on. From my side I encourage my fellow Africans to embrace Machine Learning which consists of letting algorithms discover “patterns”, namely recurring patterns, in data sets. This data can be numbers, words, images, statistics. Anything that can be stored digitally can serve as data for Machine Learning. By detecting patterns in this data, algorithms learn and improve their performance in performing a specific task. In short, machine learning algorithms autonomously learn to perform a task or make predictions from data and improve their performance over time. Once trained, the algorithm will be able to find patterns in new data.

Q: What is the current state of the law and regulation governing AI in Africa? How would you compare the level of regulation with that in other jurisdictions

Despite the development that the world has known in artificial intelligence, the world has moved to the era of the fourth industrial revolution, where advanced robots and algorithms contribute to economic prosperity, support trade, and provide services to humanity. Africa still faces challenges to integrate artificial intelligence and technology into policies

Oxford AI worldwide readiness Index shows the gap between USA ranked as first and Mauritius considered as African flagship country in AI policy, ranked 45. There are three only African countries whose scores were higher than the global average of 47.42. Mauritius and Egypt are the only countries with an official National AI Strategy that sets out a four-year plan from 2018-2022 to guide progress in this area In mid-2021, Egypt launched its national AI strategy, christened “Artificial Intelligence for Development and Prosperity” making clear ambitious development goals and economic growth

In Kenya, an AI task force of 11 experts drawn from other stakeholders, government agencies, the private sector and academia is expected to provide a roadmap on how the East African nation can apply AI “These initiatives can be seen to indicate a move towards more structured governance around AI in the region,” according to the report

The report adds, “The main priority for many subSaharan African countries is thus to develop talent and build capacity Only then can strategies be developed and implemented to guide AI readiness and ethical considerations of AI Tunisia (45 71), Morocco (42 38) and Ghana (40 19) are also among the top African countries that show high prospects of leveraging AI to boost governance and spur development

While Botswana and Ethiopia do not feature among Africa’s top ten countries in terms of AI readiness score, the report points to significant directions these economies are taking towards building their AI ecosystems.

For example, China has three AI policy approaches, the first one is led by the Cyberspace Administration of China, with a focus on rules for online algorithms and public opinion, Second belongs to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and they are mainly working on Tools for testing and certification of “trustworthy AI” systems. The third one is led by the Ministry of Science and Technology they are focusing on establishing AI ethics principles and creating tech ethics review boards within companies and research institutions.

USA last year launched the “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” in order to MAKE AUTOMATED SYSTEMS WORK FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Which includes five principles:

Which includes five principles: That people should be protected from systems deemed “unsafe or ineffective;” that people shouldn’t be discriminated against via algorithms and that AI-driven systems should be made and used “in an equitable way; ” that people should be kept safe from abusive data practices”, “where appropriate” and get help from a person instead of a computer.

At European Union, in 2018 Commission of EU published the European AI strategy which aims to ensure that AI is human-centric and trustworthy. In April 2021, the Commission presented its AI package, including Communication on fostering a European approach to AI; a review of the Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence (with EU Member States); a proposal for a regulation laying down harmonised rules on AI (AI Act) and relevant Impact assessment.

I believe that lack of resources and good infrastructures, peace and security challenges, lack of African expertise, and delays in launching national plans for artificial intelligence and understanding, are the areas of integrating artificial intelligence in Africa.

According to UNCTAD Africa has made significant strides in adopting data policy frameworks and laws. By December 2022, 33 African countries (60% of the continent), had implemented data protection legislation, up from 20 countries (36% of the region) five years ago.

Q: What are the general policies and strategies for managing the ethical and human rights issues raised by the deployment of AI?

General policies and strategies for AI deployment based on Fairness, Reliability and Safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, Transparency and Accountability, these strategies urge the globe to use AI power for common good

Q: Have governments across the continent started releasing national strategies on AI? Are there any national efforts to create data-sharing arrangements? What trends do you see?

To compare, I think Africa still lags behind and we need to invest more in AI research and rise the debate about the future of Africa in the age of the Fourth industrial revolution. At north African level Egypt has already published AI National policy, Tunisia is supposed to have launched a National AI roadmap since two years, but have not been able to due to political crises the country face in recent years

Google launched Google’s AI principles, based on 7 principles such as AI must Be socially beneficial, AI has to avoid creating or reinforcing unfair biases, AI has to be built and tested for safety, AI framework must be Accountable to the people, AI must incorporate privacy design principles, AI must uphold high standards of scientific excellence So, AI has to be made available for uses that accord with these principles

Q: What are the general policies and strategies for managing the national security and trade implications of AI? Are there any inter-trade restrictions that may apply to AI-based products?

First, Artificial intelligence plays a key role in favour of national security such as: Optimize the processing of data related to specific defence sensors (radar, sonar, electronic warfare equipment, etc.). Prepare the missions upstream (more immersive and efficient simulators, planning, etc.). Promote the operational variations of R&T work in AI.

Thus, the Ministry of Defence in France assigns a budget of €100 million/year on average over the LPM period (Military Programming Law) 2019-2025 for studies and research on AI. Also Recruiting 200 AI specialists by 2023.

Moreover, AI is already changing the worldwide value chain as long as it can be used to improve predictions of future trends. In the recent OECD report on Artificial Intelligence and international trade published in April last year, OECD identifies four separate phases in an AI system’s lifecycle

Design, data and modelling including the planning and design of an AI system, data collection and processing, as well as model building and interpretation

Verification and validation including executing and fine-tuning models

Deployment into live production, including piloting, compatibility assessment, ensuring regulatory compliance, managing organisational change, and evaluating user experience

Operation and monitoring, including continuous monitoring of outputs in light of the desired objectives

And in the same report, OECD concludes that “Trade, and by extension, trade policy, can play an important role in each phase through facilitating access to goods, services, people and data Other policy disciplines, such as the protection of intellectual property rights or international standards, would also be of importance”

This link between AI and trade has to be interpreted into international legislation, rules, regulations and ethics in order to ensure that AI is used for Humanity

Q: How are AI-related data protection and privacy issues being addressed? Have these issues affected data sharing arrangements in any way?

Referring to the Henrich Foundation report on AI and international trade, there are trade challenges ahead for AI development like: As the access to data for AI, Privacy and AI (Reducing the flow of personal data across borders is one of the main reasons why governments are currently doing so however strong privacy protections will be required if people are going to be able to trust living their lives online, which includes providing immense amounts of personal data for AI learning ) Protection of source code (Requiring source of Code was identified by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) as part of the broader issue of forced technology transfer in China As AI is based on algorithms, conditioning market access on providing access to source code operates as an international trade barrier that reduces the diffusion of AI globally) Intellectual property protection and AI, AI and trade in goods

According to UNCTAD Africa has made significant strides in adopting data policy frameworks and laws. By December 2022, 33 African countries (60% of the continent), had implemented data protection legislation, up from 20 countries (36% of the region) five years ago.

Q: How are government authorities across jurisdictions enforcing and monitoring compliance with AI legislation, regulations and practice guidance? Which entities are issuing and enforcing regulations, strategies and frameworks with respect to AI?

AI governance is a new discipline, identified as “ a system of rules, practices, processes, and technological tools that are employed to ensure an organization’s use of AI technologies aligns with the organization’s strategies, objectives, and values which fulfil legal requirements, and meets principles of ethical AI followed by the organization.”

EU governments highlights that AI have to be human centric, Last year USA inaugurated the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), which will be tasked with advising the Biden administration on how to proceed with national AI governance efforts.

In December 2021, China released the Position Paper of the Peoples' Republic of China on Regulating Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), calling on parties to observe national or regional ethical norms for AI. At African level, no country has yet developed and adopted dedicated AI legislation. The closest yet is Mauritius, which implemented licensing procedures for entities that provide investment and portfolio management services enabled by artificial intelligence in 2021

Referring to AI Governance in Africa report 2022, there are only 11% of African countries – six in total – explicitly recognize AI as a priority in their National Development Plans, with a further four countries partially doing so

Q: What have been the most noteworthy AI-related developments over the past year in your jurisdiction?

The most noteworthy AI-related development is the use of Artificial intelligence in Healthcare: where machine learning are used as models to research medical data and uncover insights to improve health outcomes AI algorithms and other AI-powered applications are helping to support healthcare professionals in clinical settings and ongoing research In the field of medical imaging, AI tools are used to analyse, scan, x-ray, MRIs and other images to detect lesions or other features that a human radiologist might miss

Q: Which industry sectors have seen the most development in AI-based products and services in your jurisdiction?

ChatGPT became the most powerful AI system in the world. It is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that is designed to understand and generate natural human language. Referring Forbes journal “The power of GPT-3 cannot be overstated. It is built on 175 billion parameters, each of which can be adjusted to improve the performance of the AI model. It is trained on vast amounts of data, including websites, texts, books, articles and other content. It has been designed to understand and generate natural human language, allowing you to talk to it just as you would ask a friend a question

Since the launch of ChatGPT, European and Chinese Universities started to develop regulations and exams to enhance plagiarism checker Noam Chomsky, well-known public intellectual said:” “ChatGPT could undermine education through high-tech plagiarism”

Q: Are there any pending or proposed legislative or regulatory initiatives in relation to AI?

April 2021 European Commission published the Proposal for a Regulation on AI in which aims to implement the development of an ecosystem of trust by proposing a legal framework for AI addressing issues such as prohibited practices for the sector, classification of high-risk IA systems or transparency obligations

Following the Commission’s proposal the regulation could enter into force late 2022/early 2023 in a transitional period The second half of 2024 is the earliest time the regulation could become applicable to operators with the standards ready and the first conformity assessments carried out

Q: What do you see as the greatest challenges facing both governments and society as a whole in relation to the deployment of AI?

I believe that the transfer of Technology is one of the major challenges to African governments and society. Because we Africans import technology and do not manufacture it. This technological dependency will harm our future and make African data to be under the control of foreign Tech companies.

The lack of home-grown Technology is threatening our African digital sovereignty as Pierre Belanger says: “Digital sovereignty is control of our present and destiny as manifested and guided by the use of technology and computer networks.”

About

Maha Jouini Founder and Head of African Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology

Author and founder the African Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology Based in Mauritania , She holds a master degree from Tianjin (China) University of Education and Technology, in the field of AI and new technology she Published several research and analytical articles in AI policies and the future of work in Africa in the AI age Fellow researcher at Center for AI and Digital Policy CAIDP

She is the African Regional Coordinator at the Global responsible AI hackathon 2023 launched by Woman in AI Ethics Initiative

Author , Speaker and Analyst, in her any publications and conferences, She highlights the Technology impact on the African economy and how technology can be a leverage for Woman and youth inclusion She advocates for Free movement of person in Africa and The African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) Through leading campaign and delivering training sessions to African youth

Q: What best practices would you recommend to assess and manage risks arising in the deployment of AI?

African policy efforts have to be built on a secure and inclusive infrastructure to support the local development of AI Empowering policy-makers and workforces on the continent in the field of AI and related data and technology skills Advocating for responsible use and development of AI in Africa and urging African government to Launch African AI Ethics Guidelines like Advancing African Value Systems and Principles in AI Ethics such as in Windhoek Statement on Artificial Intelligence in Southern Africa, Windhoek (Namibia), 9 September 2022

AI should emphasise digital literacy and education, community beneficiation, holistic reskilling programs, access to basic digital infrastructure, protection of minority ethnic communities and promotion of diverse forms of knowledge in developing AI solutions

AIandEthicsJournallinkhttps://wwwspringercom/journal/43681/ https://wwwfmprcgovcn/mfa eng/wjdt 665385/wjzcs/202211/t20221117 10976730html#: :tex t China%20finds%20it%20important%20towell%2Dbeing%20of%20all%20mankind https://aialtadvisoryafrica/wp-content/uploads/AI-Governance-in-Africa-2022pdf

This article is from: