ACTS through the ACTS AI Institute (ACAII) will host a side session on artificial intelligence (AI) at the Evidence for Development conference, taking place on 6 – 8 May, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The side session will take place on 6 May, at 2:00 – 3:15 PM EAT.
AI is often hailed as a game-changer for Africa’s development with the potential to revolutionize healthcare, education, agriculture, governance, and beyond. Yet behind the promise lies a growing chorus of critical questions: What evidence truly supports AI’s transformative potential for Africa? How do we prevent the pace of innovation from outrunning ethical considerations and regulatory frameworks? And how can Africa chart a path that ensures AI enhances, rather than undermines, livelihoods.
This side session will bring together thought leaders, researchers, policymakers, and developers to explore the dual nature of AI: both as a transformative force and a significant source of risk. This session aims to inspire a new generation of AI researchers, developers, vendors, and users, equipped with both awareness of AI’s risks and the practical tools to address them. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how ethics and scaling can feed into each other, forming a foundation for trustworthy AI systems tailored to Africa’s context.
Specifically, the session will explore the following key issues:
- Evidence for transformation. What is the actual, evidence-backed potential of AI in Africa? Beyond the hype, what sectors are already seeing impact – and where is more research needed?
- AI’s benefits and risks in context. Beyond the well-known concerns of misinformation and academic misuse through large language models like ChatGPT, what are the broader, proven risks of AI? Are there cases in Africa that show the dark side of poorly governed AI?
- Ethics and innovation. Can regulation coexist with innovation? What is the most impactful strategy to ensure AI development aligns with human rights, data protection, fairness, and accountability? Are ethical frameworks and toolkits enough to mitigate AI’s risks?
- Ethics tools and frameworks. The session will present ethics-of-AI toolboxes and demonstrate how developers and regulators can use them to assess and audit AI systems. These tools are essential in building responsible AI applications that serve Africa’s unique needs.
Speakers and panelists
- Hon. John Kiarie – Dagoretti South Member of Parliament | Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Communication, Information and Innovation.
- Prof. Tom Migun Ogada – Executive Director, African Centre for Technology Studies
- Dr. George Musumba – Dean, School of Computer Science and Information Technology and Senior Lecturer | Thematic Leader in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning – Dedan Kimathi University of Science and Technology
- Dr. Lawrence Nderu – Chairman, Dept. of Computing – JKUAT | Founder, JHUB Africa
- Florence Anyango Ogonjo – Tech Policy Researcher, Advocate of the High Court of Kenya | Research Fellow for the AI Policy Center at the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) at Strathmore University
- Brian Omwenga – Community Of Practice
- Dr. Winston Ojenge – Senior Research Fellow, African Centre for Technology Studies
- Grace Leah Okundi – Research Fellow, African Centre for Technology Studies
Moderator
- Samuel Wanjau – Research Fellow, African Centre for Technology Studies
Join us in person or virtually through bit.ly/3ELx24j
For more information, contact: ACAII[@] acts-net.org
