AI Report on Southern Africa http://misa.org The insufficiency of data in Africa is widely acknowledged within the framework of development, where accurate data serves as crucial benchmarks for measuring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and as a fundamental input for advancing contemporary technology. Journalists at the Bulawayo meeting raised concerns about the threat of algorithmic bias. Having been trained on datasets from Western contexts, which had already demonstrated innate biases, particularly racial prejudices, Bulawayo participants questioned the legitimacy of AI tools in African news situations. How would they deal with the numerous social, economic, and political divisions and other complexities in the African context? A related concern from lawyers at the Johannesburg meeting was AI systems’ accountability and legal culpability. South Africa granted a patent to an AI rather than a human in 2021, prompting ethical concerns about providing AI legal personhood and potentially enabling loopholes for firms and developers to avoid legal and financial liability in cases where AI causes harm. The Governance Pillar: According to Oxford Insights, governance is the most crucial pillar because the other pillars become ineffective without a government’s interest and ambition to employ AI for revolutionary reasons. The government should have a strategic vision for AI development and management backed by appropriate laws and a focus on ethical issues. Furthermore, it must have a strong internal digital capacity, which includes the skills and practices that allow it to adapt to new technology. South Africa leads the Southern African region regarding AI readiness and adoption, followed by Botswana and Namibia. South Africa’s government has launched a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy to encourage AI innovation and adoption across many sectors. Botswana and Namibia have also made progress in AI adoption, with programmes such as AI for Development and Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development Goals, respectively. This entails investing in R&D, establishing enabling rules and regulations, and assuring a competent labour force. In September 2022, the UNESCO-Southern Africa Sub-Regional Office hosted the SARFAI 2022 Forum on AI in Windhoek, Namibia4. Discussions focused on the Ethical Impact and 4 12 UNESCO Southern Africa sub-Regional Forum on Artificial Intelligence https://sarfai2022.org/#/home