Artificial Intelligence for Economic Policymaking: The Frontier of Africa’s Economic Transformation

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become a constant in the lives of most people through its application in commerce, education, health, public service delivery, communications, governance, agriculture, and manufacturing. For the developing world, AI is already contributing in many ways: to target humanitarian relief, address climate impacts, and support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet in Africa, most countries lack comprehensive policy frameworks to incentivize responsible AI, regulate AI-driven business models, or effectively promote the creation and capture of high-quality African data.

According to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Union (EU) and 60 other countries have some form of AI strategies that cover more than 600 policy initiatives. There are more than 50 such initiatives in the EU and nearly 50 in the United States, but few such efforts in Africa. Per the Government AI Readiness Index 2022, Africa is ranked the lowest compared to all other regions, and numerous African countries are in the lowest range of the rankings. There are just not many countries on the continent with holistic strategies for innovation and digital transformation, including AI.

But even within this slowly evolving environment, there are many useful examples of AI applications across Africa, from private sector innovation to government adoption of big data. This report was designed to assess the viability of using AI to inform inclusive and sustainable economic, financial, and industrial policies in Africa and to help identify both where traditional and non-traditional data exists and where gaps remain. It was also written with the objective of establishing the basis for future work on how to fill those gaps and develop an approach for designing and implementing a research initiative based on well-designed models for economic transformation.

The research was conducted through a combination of desk analysis, key informant interviews and stakeholder workshops. This work began in April 2022 and was concluded in January 2023. It was carried out by ACET with financial support from the Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) Africa program, a partnership between International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).