Who Funds AI Policy Development in Africa?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly emerged as a strategic priority across Africa. Experts often link it to the economic transformation of the continent amidst formidable challenges such as inadequate digital infrastructure, capacity development, and governance frameworks. The continent has seen the development of numerous AI governance frameworks, policies and strategies over the past eight years. Yet a closer look at how these strategies come into being reveals an uncomfortable pattern.

A significant share of the continent’s AI governance effort has mostly been financed by European development partners. This reality is not scandalous, but it does reinforce a long-standing practice rooted in colonial norms. International partnership has always been a part of how policy capacity is built in developing regions, but as Africa increasingly drives its own development objectives it is critical that African governments match the support coming from development partners in crafting AI policy and eventually take full financial and technical responsibility.

The Pacesetters: Mauritius and Egypt
Currently, about 17 AI strategies/policies have been adopted in Africa with the earliest dating to November 2018: the Mauritius AI Strategy. The strategy was entirely an internal government initiative, with no external funding. Developed by the country’s Working Group on AI under a Cabinet-led steering committee, the report was written by the Economic Development Board with administrative and logistical support from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development[1]. This is a shining example of what it means for African governments to prioritize AI policy development by driving the process fully and making necessary budgetary allocations toward it. The strategy is said to have led to the setup of the Mauritius Emerging Technologies Council (METC), which is a major achievement of the implementation of the strategy. However, policy analysts have opined that Mauritius’ 2018 AI strategy gave insufficient attention to ethics, societal inclusion, environmental impact and cross-sector accountability mechanisms[2].

The Mauritius AI Strategy was closely followed by Egypt’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy commissioned under a direct presidential mandate in 2021. It was drafted and funded internally by the Egyptian government, specifically through the Technical Committee of the National Council for Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.[3] Egypt also demonstrates what it means for an African government to take full ownership of its AI strategy and finance its development through public funds.

A Dwindling Trend
Mauritius and Egypt have distinguished themselves as pacesetters in AI policy development in Africa. Since many more African countries have followed their example, it is an opportunity for the others at various stages of AI policy development to learn from and even from countries such as the USA, China, Brazil etc. The trend that the pacesetters set seems to have dwindled as most of the countries that followed in their footsteps were not as clear about ownership and funding. Most received funding, technical assistance and advisors from development partners, mostly from Europe.

The Donor Landscape
The pacesetters in African AI policy development, Mauritius and Egypt, have both reviewed their earlier AI strategies, developed and adopted newer versions and are in the second phase of AI strategy implementation. It is worthy of note that although the development of their initial AI strategies didn’t receive external financial or technical support, Mauritius’ latest strategy received support from UNDP[4] while the World Bank has pledged support for the implementation of Egypt’s current AI Strategy[5]. International development assistance is hugely important and governments across Africa have benefited from financial support, technical expertise and convening power provided by organizations such as GIZ through its FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All initiative, the United Kingdom’s FDCO, the European Union (EU), UNDP, UNESCO, and other bilateral and multilateral partners. This support usually goes into stakeholder consultations, technical studies, drafting workshops and capacity-building exercises.

At the same time, as national governments were developing strategies, there were important continental initiatives including the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy[6], AU Data Policy Framework[7], Smart Africa’s AI Blueprint[8] and the Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA)[9]. These have sought to provide common direction for responsible AI governance across the continent and reflect important continent-wide ownership. These types of efforts have also received funding from international partners.

Ownership, Not Just Access
International cooperation has accelerated Africa’s AI policy journey and strengthened knowledge exchange across countries. Strong donor support can help African countries draw on global good practices and expertise in areas such as ethical and responsible AI, gender inclusion, and digital public infrastructure (DPI). This can strengthen African AI policy and should be encouraged. That said, governments in Africa should own the policy development process for the sake of improving the socio-economic realities of their citizens, not because there is funding available. The challenge is ensuring that donor support remains catalytic rather than substituting for long-term domestic investment, and that support is tailored to specific country contexts. As African countries move from drafting strategies to implementing and periodically reviewing them, governments themselves must increasingly finance these processes to demonstrate national ownership and commitment. Government budget allocations are more than accounting exercises: they signal political commitment. When governments dedicate public resources to AI policy development, implementation and review, they communicate both to policymakers and the public that in-country AI development is not merely a donor-funded initiative but a national development priority.

Considerations for African Governments
Here are a few AI policy development considerations for African governments in the process of developing or reviewing any kind of AI policy document:

Funding inevitably influences policy processes by shaping the scope of consultations, the depth of research and the pace of implementation. Therefore, it is an integral component to developing a context-aware and forward-looking AI policy.
When a government ministry cannot find funds to convene its own stakeholders, draft its own strategy, or resource its own review process, it tells donors, citizens, and investors alike that AI governance is not yet a national priority, however enthusiastically it is discussed at summits.
Citizens represented by various ecosystem players and stakeholders become more confident of the adopted AI policy when it reflects their needs and pain points, and when their governments fund the drafting process.
Adoption and implementation can be impacted positively when governments progressively assume greater financial and technical responsibility for national AI governance while continuing to benefit from international expertise.
The Fiscal Reality and the Path Forward
African governments indeed have competing priorities including debt service. In 2024 alone, Sub-Saharan governments spent about 18.7% of revenues on external debt service – three times the figure in 2014[10]. Nevertheless, governments must recognize AI as a strategic investment and allocate dedicated resources for the development and implementation of national AI strategies, rather than relying solely on external financing.

First, countries yet to begin drafting an AI strategy should set aside even a modest domestic budget line before approaching any development partner, so that government, not the funder, initiates, owns and chairs the process from day one. Second, countries currently developing strategies with donor support should insist on co-financing stakeholder engagements and secretariat costs, even partially, so that the final document is unambiguously a government-owned product. Third, countries that already have a published strategy should budget for its periodic review and revision themselves. Finally, for many countries, ensuring that AI policy development is internally funded is not a heavy lift. Even a lean, nationally funded strategy built on a handful of local consultations and a small technical secretariat may, in fact, be a more durable one.