Africa’s AI Gap: Gabi-Williams Mobilises Writers & Innovators To Protect Indigenous Knowledge

Africa Must Own Its AI Future, Gabi-Williams & Contributors Declare

The Digital Revolution Raises Questions About African Ownership

ARTIFICIAL intelligence is transforming how people write, communicate, conduct research, preserve information and create economic opportunities. Yet, as these technologies become increasingly influential, an important question confronts Africa: who controls the systems through which the continent’s knowledge, languages and cultural identities are represented?

For Olatoun Gabi-Williams, founder and curator of Living Sustainably Here: African Perspectives on SDGs, Africa must move beyond using digital technologies and become an active participant in building, training and governing them.

Her argument gained prominence during the launch of the anthology’s second volume, Our Digital Lives and Indigenous Pathways, at CANEX 2026 in Lagos. The publication brings together African perspectives on the relationship between digital transformation, indigenous knowledge and sustainable development.

The discussion also featured contributions from four writers: Pelumi Olatunji, Shomade, Malik Afegbua and Taiwo Egunjobi. Through their different professional experiences, they examined the risks of leaving African knowledge outside the systems that increasingly determine global access to information.

AI Systems Must Understand African Languages & Experiences

The growing use of artificial intelligence has generated debates about authorship, originality and the reliability of automated detection systems.

Controversies surrounding allegations of AI-assisted writing involving authors of African descent have reinforced concerns about how technological systems interpret different literary styles and linguistic expressions.

In the view expressed in the article, AI tools trained without sufficient representation of African languages and writing traditions may misinterpret distinctive expressions and produce unreliable assessments.

That concern raises a broader issue. If African languages, oral traditions and literary conventions remain inadequately represented in the datasets used to train AI systems, the resulting technologies may fail to reflect the continent’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

Consequently, African researchers and technology professionals must participate in developing the datasets, language models and evaluation systems that influence how AI understands the world.

Without such involvement, the continent risks becoming a passive consumer of technologies whose underlying assumptions and knowledge structures are determined elsewhere.

Afegbua Calls for African-Owned AI Infrastructure

Malik Afegbua, a filmmaker, technologist and AI trainer, placed digital ownership at the centre of the discussion.

He expressed concern that Africa uses artificial intelligence applications without exercising sufficient control over the infrastructure and systems that power them.

“If you think about context of how AI is used, it is less than 2% being created (in Africa),” he said, arguing that major technology developers do not adequately consider African needs.

For him, the challenge is not simply to gain access to existing applications. Instead, African countries and institutions must develop the capacity to collect relevant information, train systems with local data and build technologies that respond to their own circumstances.

Afegbua therefore advocated a practical approach that begins with documenting what already exists across African communities.

He proposed field research, interviews, historical documentation and the collection of cultural artefacts as ways to build reliable repositories of indigenous knowledge.

Moreover, he urged researchers to engage older people, whom he described as gateways to the past.

Their memories and experiences, he argued, can provide valuable information about architecture, community organisation, traditional practices and other aspects of African life that remain insufficiently documented.

Rather than waiting for government intervention, he encouraged individuals and organisations to begin collecting and preserving information within their communities.

Indigenous Knowledge Can Inform Future Technologies

The conversation also challenged the assumption that technological advancement requires abandoning traditional knowledge.

For Pelumi Olatunji, indigenous architecture offers practical lessons that contemporary urban planners can adapt to address environmental challenges.

He criticised the construction of modern buildings that, in his assessment, frequently ignore natural ventilation and local climatic conditions.

According to him, excessive dependence on cement and other carbon-intensive construction materials also raises questions about environmental sustainability.

He therefore urged architects, planners and policymakers to investigate how earlier African societies designed buildings that responded to their environments.

“Our forebears built to fit our climate,” he said, arguing that modern development should examine and adapt the principles behind traditional construction.

Such research, he maintained, could help African cities develop more environmentally responsible building practices.

This perspective also connects indigenous knowledge to contemporary technological research. By documenting traditional construction methods and making reliable information accessible through digital platforms, researchers can help preserve practices that may inform future architectural innovation.

Education Must Encourage Critical Thinking

Shomade traced part of Africa’s limited engagement with indigenous knowledge to educational systems that have often prioritised memorisation over independent inquiry.

He argued that rote learning has restricted opportunities for students to interrogate historical narratives and investigate the intellectual contributions of earlier African societies.

However, he observed that younger scholars were increasingly questioning established accounts and reassessing the historical records produced by missionaries and colonial-era institutions.

Referring to the writings of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther and early Christian missionaries, he argued that these accounts should be studied within their historical and religious contexts.

Although acknowledging their contributions, he maintained that their work did not necessarily capture every dimension of African cultural and social life.

For Shomade, the task facing contemporary researchers is to expand historical inquiry, challenge inherited assumptions and recover perspectives that earlier accounts may have overlooked.

He also advocated greater community participation in policymaking, particularly where environmental protection and urban development are concerned.

Rather than imposing policies from the top down, he argued, governments should involve the people whose lives those decisions affect.

Drawing attention to Japan’s adaptation of foreign development models, he suggested that African countries could learn from international experiences while adjusting them to local circumstances.

Digital Media Creates New Opportunities for African Filmmakers

Taiwo Egunjobi brought the conversation into the creative economy by examining how digital platforms have expanded opportunities for independent filmmakers.

Based in Ibadan, the filmmaker explained that he deliberately produces his films outside Lagos to contribute to the development of the industry in his own city.

His approach challenges the concentration of creative activity in established production centres and demonstrates how digital tools can support filmmaking in other locations.

Egunjobi also pointed to the economic potential of micro-dramas and alternative distribution channels.

He argued that many African filmmakers remain unfamiliar with platforms that could help them sell their productions to international audiences, including black film platforms.

However, he warned that creators who fail to follow changes in digital distribution risk missing emerging commercial opportunities.

He also questioned the quality and social value of some content circulating on popular platforms among young Nigerians.

Comparing the content environment in Nigeria with China’s emphasis on science and engineering in digital media, he called for more educational and development-oriented material.

At the same time, he warned that foreign producers could take the lead in telling African stories if local filmmakers fail to invest in their own narratives.

Although he welcomed growing international interest in Afrocentric filmmaking, he stressed that Africans must retain an active role in creating and distributing their stories.

Cultural Data Requires African Stewardship

Gabi-Williams extended the discussion beyond technology to the ownership of cultural information.

She recalled the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages, covering 2022–2032, and the second International Decade for People of African Descent, running from 2025 to 2034.

While these international initiatives offer opportunities for research and cultural preservation, she cautioned against allowing external interventions to determine the meaning and value of African cultural materials without adequate local participation.

Her concern is that foreign experts could assume responsibility for interpreting indigenous artefacts and languages without fully understanding the cultural contexts that give them meaning.

She therefore raised fundamental questions about ownership, control and the distribution of benefits.

Who determines how an artefact is interpreted? Who controls the information collected? Who benefits financially and intellectually from the resulting digital resources?

For Gabi-Williams, African institutions and communities must answer these questions before external partnerships expand.

A Two-Volume Project Connects Technology to Sustainable Development

The concerns raised at CANEX 2026 reflect the wider objectives of Gabi-Williams’s anthology, Living Sustainably Here: African Perspectives on SDGs, published by Selina Publications.

The first volume, Paths to Knowledge: Production, Access, Literacy and Sustainable Development, was launched in May at the Lagos International Book Fair. The second, Our Digital Lives and Indigenous Pathways, examines the opportunities and challenges created by digital technologies, with particular attention to indigenous knowledge systems.

Gabi-Williams explained that the anthology brings together professionals from different fields to examine sustainability through their local experiences, knowledge and skills.

Both volumes draw on the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union’s Agenda 2063, The Africa We Want.

Through these frameworks, the project explores how African societies can connect international development priorities with their own cultural resources, aspirations and practical realities.

She also identified wider distribution and translation as important priorities. In particular, she expressed interest in partnerships that would produce editions in colonial and indigenous languages.

Such collaborations could expand the anthology’s reach through the work of African Books Collective, an African-owned marketing and distribution organisation based in Oxford, United Kingdom.

Africa’s Digital Future Depends on Participation & Ownership

Despite the challenges discussed at the launch, the contributors expressed confidence in Africa’s capacity to preserve its heritage and participate more actively in technological development.

Shomade pointed to renewed interest in indigenous knowledge, although he identified inadequate local funding and institutional gatekeeping as obstacles facing younger researchers.

Afegbua maintained that storytelling remains central to how societies understand themselves and imagine their futures. He called for Africans to take greater responsibility for the information they preserve, consume and distribute.

Similarly, Olatunji stressed the importance of protecting indigenous knowledge and cultivating older people as custodians of cultural history.

Egunjobi, meanwhile, urged African filmmakers to take ownership of their narratives before foreign producers define those stories for international audiences.

Together, their contributions reinforce Gabi-Williams’s central argument: Africa’s participation in the digital revolution must involve more than access to technology. It must include the capacity to generate knowledge, preserve cultural information, develop relevant infrastructure and determine how African intellectual resources are used.

Ultimately, the continent’s digital future will depend partly on whether its people can connect indigenous knowledge with contemporary innovation while retaining control over their cultural and intellectual heritage.