West Africa’s six-country push for a common AI rulebook 🌍🤖

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On July 6, six West African countries reached a milestone few outside policy circles noticed. Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea, and Benin adopted shared guidelines to govern how artificial intelligence gets built and deployed within their borders. The initiative, driven by advocacy group Niyel, was unveiled on the sidelines of the UN’s first Global Dialogue on AI Governance.

Africa wants the wheel, not the back seat 🌍

The pitch is simple: don’t wait for AI’s rules to be written elsewhere and imported later. The document adopted at the dialogue pushes for AI systems that are transparent, inclusive, and grounded in local realities — with a specific focus on the small and medium businesses that make up the backbone of these economies.

Aminata Zerbo/Sabane, Burkina Faso’s minister of Digital Transition, Post, and Electronic Communications, framed the guidelines as a chance for the continent to build a tech model it actually owns. Her take: every nation now faces a choice — get swept up by the AI wave, or help steer it.

National strategies already in motion🚀

Senegal and Ivory Coast didn’t wait for this dialogue to fold AI into their national development plans. Ivory Coast’s National AI Strategy (SNIA 2030), run by the Ministry of Digital Transition and Digitalization, is aiming to turn the country into a regional AI hub by 2030 — an ambition reinforced by a dedicated AI university now written into the country’s 2026-2030 National Development Plan, a sign of how central the technology has become to its broader economic playbook.

Senegal, meanwhile, rolled out its own National AI Strategy and Roadmap back in 2023, targeting 2028. Worth clarifying: this isn’t the same thing as the Plan Sénégal Émergent (PSE), the country’s long-running economic development plan — the AI strategy is designed to align with and reinforce the PSE, not replace it. Senegal’s roadmap includes training close to 90,000 people in data science and AI by 2028, part of a broader bid to become a West African innovation hub.

Backing from the international stage 🌐

These local efforts are landing well internationally. Niyel’s guidelines were submitted as a formal written contribution to the UN’s Global Dialogue on AI Governance, while UNESCO keeps pushing for ethical AI deployment worldwide. The African Union isn’t sitting this one out either: its Continental AI Strategy, adopted in July 2024, actively encourages member states to build coherent national tech policies.

Francophone African countries are showing a clear, growing appetite for shaping their own AI future — turning a global technological challenge into a continental development opportunity.

So, can francophone Africa really build an AI model of its own, or is it destined to stay dependent on standards set by the world’s tech powers? Let us know in the comments.