Regional, state and multilateral artificial intelligence (AI) governing schemes cater to the peculiar concerns of participating entities. While states from, and entities domiciled in, the Global North dominate most of the key arrangements in this regard, a handful of African states (many of them leaders in AI discourse on the continent) also participate meaningfully in a number of multilateral agreements. Accordingly, strategies and procedures enacted under these agreements often shape AI governance on the African continent. African states have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, AI-governing instruments at both the national and regional levels. An important theme common to most of these instruments is the leveraging of AI technologies to improve the conditions of African peoples. While there is a noticeable inclination toward correcting for colonially inflected marginalization undergirding AI governance on the continent, there is more room for African states to take bold steps toward placing decolonial praxes at the centre of global and national AI governance both nationally and continentally.
