Introduction: AI in Africa

Building community-centered and locally tailored systems

This 'rapid research' was conducted by The Engine Room in November 2024, in preparation for Mozfest Zambia.

As AI continues to develop rapidly worldwide, we are seeing some African developers taking new, community-centered approaches to AI that respond directly to local contexts. For some of these, there is a focus on creating technologies that prioritize inclusivity, adaptability, and social benefit, rather than primarily economic gain or worse, harms.

In our research, we set out to identify examples of these community-oriented AI projects across Africa – systems that are innovative, sustainable, and flexible enough to adapt to African social and cultural needs.

Although we didn’t find projects that fully aligned with each of these aspirational criteria, several emerging initiatives still capture qualities that could lay the foundation for a transformative AI ecosystem across the continent.

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We imagine the 'African AI Pluriverse' to be made up of systems that are community centered, socially just, transformative and rooted in local knowledge. In thinking about the qualities these systems could have, we thought about different animals and natural elements that embody different qualities. To this end, we worked with artist Musa Omusi to design a poster for our info-table at Mozfest Zambia.