Decolonizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Africa

Technology Ownership, Cultural Mimicry and a Necessary Renewed Progressive African Consciousness.     

A  Brief Presentation to Shoko Festival Hub Un-Conference, Wednesday 24 September 2025 , Harare, Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

I would like to thank the Shoko Festival, Hub-UnConference team and their stakeholders for inviting me to give this brief presentation on ‘Decolonising Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Africa’.  A topic which is very important not only in the contemporary but also for a future in which Africa gets more connected via electricity, mobile telephony and the multiple nodes of what we now refer to as the internet (social media, streaming, email and Wi-Fi or more recently Starlink.)     

To begin with I am certain that most of you in this particular physical and also virtual audience watching are likely basically aware of what AI is.  Technically and culturally.  

On the simplistic technical front it is a system in which computing systems essentially use data and algorithms to replace what would be otherwise scientific human behavior.  That is such processes that would otherwise have been done by medical doctors, engineers, nurses, motor mechanics, airline pilots, taxi drivers and medical laboratory experts among many others.  

Culturally, AI, is also the computing of cultural traits and the modification of human behavior.  It is beginning to paly an much larger role in how we perceive or learn of ourselves, our music, drama, television and most significantly in our languages.

Ask any teacher or college/university lecturer how they now have to cautiously guard against receiving assignments written by ChatGP or DeepSeek even at secondary school level. Let alone university and PhD levels.  This is before we even start discussing music, drama, television and movies that are now increasingly run by algorithms that are designed to re-align  your cultural preferences.  Not only to ignore the repressive nature of African colonial history but to create new revisionist meaning to it.

Because I don’t have much time, I will make a relatively controversial point.

AI is the new cultural and economic ‘maxim gun’ in Africa.  For those that may not have studied their African history, we were, as Africans, based on our numerical numbers against the colonialists in the wars of the late 19^th century, going to win those initial struggles against colonialism. 

Until the arrival of the maxim gun which proved pivotal in protecting the colonial larger across Southern and Eastern Africa.  

Mainly because we did not see it coming.  And could only learn both within the ambit of tragic circumstances and after how that machine worked.  To only mount more modern liberation struggles at least 50 years later after the second World War and the formation of the United Nations. 

With AI we are quite literally not only seeing it but using it now. Even if by default.

 But not understanding its ‘maxim gun’ cultural and economic effect.  It is not killing us physically but with its current trends, it is modifying African human behavior into falling in line with global north or western values.

Ad this is in three main respects.

The first being the technological.  We do not as Africans own an iota of AI.  It is owned by what academics and global north progressive activists have referred to as ‘techno-feudalists’.  These are those that are for example around the current acerbic American president Donald Trump who own AI related platforms that have the public form of social media platforms but are essentially also working on machine generated learning and algorithms.  This also includes China ’s Xi Jinping and its own AI companies that intend to have a hand over the global wests ones. 

To put it simply, you do not own your Facebook, Tick-tock, Whatsapp or X account.  You are given the impression of owning it.  The algorithm is not yours.  At all.   More so if you post matters that are  against a given global north narrative. 

Essentially always bear in mind, every time you log into a social media account or decide to use ChatGPT or any other forms of technology to construct  something you do not own it.  Its copyrighted at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). 

In the second instance and as I have alluded to with my metaphoric reference to the ‘maxim gun’, AI is intended to be a mixed bag of technology and its awe with its cultural indefatigability (sorry for the big word). 

Depending on the size of the population/market, you are from, AI has its cultural preferences.  Hence our colleagues in Swahili speaking East Africa are a step of us in trying to counter AI and its emergent roles in languages and cultural productions.   But more significantly our fellow and equal human beings retain a cultural (and in some cases quasi racist) supremacy over AI.  In a very hegemonic sense. That is where culture meets economic realities and manufacture materialistic desires.  

Hence our local influencers are getting cars and cash handouts based on what the algorithm accepts and what those with power find palatable to their stay in political and economic power. 

In the final and third instance, as Africans, we need to establish a new way forward.  One that focuses beyond mimicry of global north AI.  Even if we don’t own it.   We need to understand that there is more to the technology, its sources of origin and our own context. In this, it is necessary to reclaim cultural identities and Pan African mindsets as a priority.  Nationally, continentally and globally (with an emphasis on the Diaspora.) 

While at the same time remembering it is not always about the money or mimicry for the same.

To conclude, AI, is not going to go away. It may change format as did the television, the fixed telephone line, but it will be with us for not only the lifetimes of those here among us an online, but for the long term future.  The question is the extent to which we can harness it to our contexts.  We will neve own it technically.  But we can challenge its hegemonic intent culturally.   Just like what you choose to watch, create on or for Netflix, Meta (Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram) has to be made to overwhelmingly challenge the numbers and language challenges of AI.  Before we, in Africa can even begin to talk about the machines that we do not own. 

Takura Zhangazha spoke here in his personal capacity.