Governance Archives – Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)

AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ECO-SYSTEM FOR UGANDA

14Feb

Policy Alternatives for an Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem in Uganda

CIPESA February 14, 2025February 14, 2025

CIPESA |

Economic projections show that by 2030, artificial intelligence (AI) will add USD 15.7 trillion to the global economy. Of this, USD 1.2 trillion will be generated in Africa and could boost the continent’s Gross Domestic Product by 5.6%. Despite AI’s transformative potential, there are concerns about the risks it poses to individuals’ rights and freedoms. There is therefore a need to foster a trusted and ethical AI ecosystem that elicits peoples’ confidence while guaranteeing an enabling atmosphere for innovation, to best harness AI for the greater public good for all.

The discussion on AI in Uganda is still in early stages. Nonetheless, the country needs to develop a comprehensive and AI-specific legal and institutional governance framework to provide for regulatory oversight over AI and the diverse actors in the AI ecosystem. Currently, various pieces of legislation, which majorly focus on general-purpose technologies, constitute the legal framework relevant to AI. However, these laws do not provide sufficient regulatory cover to AI, its associated benefits and mitigation of risks to human security, rights and freedoms.

In a new policy brief, the Collaboration on ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) reviews the AI policymaking journeys of various countries, such as Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, Luxembourg, France and Germany, and proposes 11 actions Uganda could take to fulfil its aspiration to effectively regulate and harness AI.

The existing key policy frameworks include the Uganda Vision 2040, which emphasises the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering and Innovation (STEI) as critical drivers of economic growth and social transformation; and the National Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) Strategy that aims to accelerate Uganda’s development into an innovative, productive and competitive society using 4IR technologies, with emphasis on using AI in the public sector to improve financial management and tax revenue collection. Meanwhile, the third National Development Plan (NDP III) identifies the promotion of digital transformation and the adoption of 4IR technologies, including AI, as critical components for achieving Uganda’s vision of becoming a middle-income country.

The legal frameworks that impact AI-related oversight include the Constitution that lays out crucial benchmarks for the regulation of AI. It provides for the role of the state in stimulating agricultural, industrial, technological and scientific development by adopting appropriate policies and enacting enabling legislation. The constitution also provides for the right to privacy, freedom from discrimination, and the right to equality.

Other key laws include the Data Protection and Privacy Act of 2019 which, even if it was not drafted with AI in mind, is directly relevant to the regulation of AI technologies through the lens of data protection. The Computer Misuse Act of 2011 provides a framework that addresses unlawful use of computers and electronic systems. Relevant to the governance of AI is section 12, which criminalises unauthorised access to a computer or electronic system.

The National Information Technology Authority, Uganda (NITA-U) Act offers a foundation for improving infrastructure to support AI regulation efforts, and established NITA-U, a body responsible for regulating, coordinating, and promoting information technology in the country.

Overall, the current policy and legal framework, however fragmented, provides a starting point for enacting comprehensive, AI-specific legislation.

The growing adoption of AI brings a host of opportunities that positively impact society, including improved productivity and efficiency for individuals, the health sector, civil society organisations, the media, financial institutions, manufacturing industries, supplier chains, agriculture, climate and weather research and academia. AI is also being used by public agencies such as Uganda Revenue Authority to support more effective revenue collection. Uganda’s telecommunications operators are also utilising AI, for example to send targeted messages that encourage users to subscribe to loan offers such as Airtel Wewole and MTN MoKash..

Prospects for AI Regulation in Uganda

As Uganda’s journey of AI adoption and usage gains traction, the following guiding actions that underlie progressive AI frameworks across various countries could help quicken and offer direction to Uganda’s AI aspirations.

Establishment of an AI governance institutional framework to guide the national adoption and usage of AI.
Development and implementation of a “living” framework of best practices on AI that operates across the diverse sectors affected by AI. Singapore provides a best practice in this regard where, as a national agenda, there is consistent codification of best practices that inform the safe evolution of AI in the different spheres. The best practices framework allows for complementing of the regulatory framework. By adopting this best practice framework, Uganda would keep up with the evolution of AI without necessarily undertaking statutory amendments especially in the AI/technology world where there are rapid changes.
Implementation of checks and balances through the creation of specific policies, regulations, guidelines, and laws to manage AI effectively and address the existing significant gaps in its regulation and oversight. To address this, key stakeholders – including the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance, the Uganda Communications Commission, NITA-U, and the Personal Data Protection Office – must collaborate to develop comprehensive and tailored regulations. This effort should focus on understanding AI’s specific dynamics, impacts, and challenges within the Ugandan context and not wholesomely adopting or replicating legislation from other jurisdictions, given the divergences in context at continental, regional and national levels.
Tap into the African AI Frameworks for Inspiration. Drawing on regional and international frameworks, such as the African Union’s AI Policy and the European Union’s AI Act, will offer key strategic guidelines and intervention measures to shape a robust and effective AI legislation in Uganda.
Establish a National Research and Innovative Fund on AI to effectively tap into and harvest the dividends that come with AI. This kind of funding requiring direct government intervention is informed by the reality that surrounds the high levels of uncertainty of outcomes in tech innovation.
Develop and implement a National Strategy for AI to enhance policy coordination and coherence and offer direction and guidance. This would encompass the national vision for AI in Uganda’s social and economic development, and guide all other initiatives on progressive AI regulation.
Develop and implement a National Citizenry Awareness and Public Education Programme on AI to better prepare citizens to engage with AI responsibly, ensure inclusion and advocate for ethical practices.
Apply human rights protective AI to influence the designing of AI systems with fairness, transparency, and accountability, and employ diverse and representative datasets to mitigate biases related to ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.
Establish a mechanism that can enforce ethical use of AI by the various stakeholders, including through emphasising transparency and accountability in AI deployment.

Establish cyber security protocols to counter inherent vulnerability to cyber-attacks and other attendant digital security risks that come with AI.
Create a conducive atmosphere for citizenry platforms for AI engagements. These platforms can be conduits for encouraging best practices, and latest research information among other emerging issues on AI that could benefit the country. An AI ecosystem should thus favour and strategically support such inter-agency, inter-sector and public-private collaboration and formal linkages to also facilitate AI technology transfer from explorations, studies and innovation to actual application.

Read the full brief here.

20Nov

Introducing “Community Fakes”, A Crowdsourcing Platform to Combat AI-Generated Deepfakes

CIPESA November 20, 2024December 3, 2024

ADRF Grantee Update |

As the world enters the era of artificial intelligence, the rise of deepfakes and AI-generated media presents significant threats to the integrity of democratic processes, particularly in fragile democracies. These processes are vital for ensuring fairness, accountability, and citizen engagement.

When compromised, the foundational values of democracy—and society’s trust in its leaders and institutions—are at risk. Safeguarding democracy in the AI era requires vigilance, collaboration, and innovative solutions, such as building a database of verified AI manipulations to protect the truth and uphold free societies.

In the Global South, where political stability is often tenuous, the stakes are even higher. Elections can easily be influenced by mis/disinformation, now accessible at minimal cost and requiring little technical skill. Malicious actors can easily use these tools to create and amplify false content at scale. This risk is amplified in authoritarian regimes, where AI-generated mis/disinformation is increasingly weaponised to manipulate public opinion, undermine elections, or silence dissent. From fabricated videos of political figures to manipulated media, such regimes exploit advanced technologies to sow confusion and mistrust, further destabilising already fragile democracies.

Despite ongoing efforts by social media platforms and AI companies to develop detection tools, these solutions remain inadequate, particularly in culturally and linguistically diverse regions like the Global South. Detection algorithms often rely on patterns trained on Western datasets, which fail to account for local cultural cues, dialects, and subtleties. This gap allows deepfake creators to exploit these nuances, leaving communities vulnerable to disinformation, especially during critical events like elections.

Recognising the urgency of addressing these challenges, Threats developed Community Fakes, an incident database and central repository for researchers to submit, share, and analyse deepfakes and other AI-altered media. This platform enables collaboration, combining human insights with AI tools to create a robust defence against disinformation. By empowering users to identify, upload, and discuss suspect content, Community Fakes offers a comprehensive, adaptable approach to protecting the integrity of information.

The initiative was made possible through the CIPESA-run African Digital Rights Fund (ADRF), which supports innovative interventions to advance digital rights across Africa. The grant to Thraets for the project titled “Safeguarding African Elections—Mitigating the Risk of AI-Generated Mis/Disinformation to Preserve Democracy” aims to counter the increasing risks posed by AI-generated disinformation, which could jeopardise free and fair elections.

The project has conducted research on elections in Tunisia and Ghana, with the findings feeding into tutorials for journalists and fact-checkers on identifying and countering AI-generated electoral disinformation and awareness campaigns on the need for transparency on the capabilities of AI tools and their risks to democracy.

Additionally, the project held an Ideathon to generate novel ideas for combating AI-generated disinformation and developed the Spot the Fakes quiz, which gives users the opportunity to dive into the world of AI-generated synthetic media and how to distinguish between the authentic and the fake.

Community Fakes will crowdsource human intelligence to complement AI-based detection, thereby allowing users to leverage their unique insights to spot inconsistencies in AI-generated media that machines may overlook, while having conversations with other experts around the observed patterns. Users can submit suspected deepfakes to the platform, which the global community can then scrutinise, verify, and expose. According to Thraets, this approach ensures that even the most convincing deepfakes can be exposed before they can do irreparable harm.

Find a full outline of Community Fakes here.

15Dec

Thanks to ICT, government secrets get ever fewer

admin December 15, 2015

By John Walubengo |

Have ICTs enhanced political participation, social accountability, public service delivery and citizen engagement in East Africa in the recent past?

These were the research questions behind a study commissioned by CIPESA, a regional think tank focusing on ICTs in East and Central Africa.

In Kenya’s case, the answers are found in its recently published ICTs in Governance report. Some, which make for interesting reading, are highlighted below.
ICT IN POLITICS

During the last general elections, Kenyans flocked onto social media platforms in support of their parties and presidential candidates.

Parties also embraced ICTs and used it to extensively engage with supporters in dynamic and interactive ways that were previously impossible.

Blogs, Facebook walls, Twitter pages and websites were constantly updated with real-time information about campaign events, meetings, party manifestos amongst others.

However, the ugly side of ICTs was later to emerge after the Supreme Court validated the hotly contested presidential results.

With the ICC case hanging in the background, many say that Kenyans opted for “electronic” rather than the “physical” post-election violence experienced in 2007/8.

Social media tools were deployed to mount vitriol against perceived enemies, along the usual tribal contours that define our politics while degrading our capacities as a united nation.

This ethnicised use of ICT continues to be worrying as we move towards the 2017 elections.

ICTs AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

ICTs have proved to be a strong platform for enhancing transparency and accountability. Many government agencies have deployed ICT platforms to share documents that were previously inaccessible in their “hard-copy” state.

Parliament’s website has regularly updated copies of the Hansard, the Treasury has recent copies of the Budget, with the Controller of Budget regularly reporting on how it is administered.

Publicly procured contracts are also frequently listed and updated by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority.

Various commissions have also adopted ICTs with the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution, the body mandated to ensure that the Constitution is implemented deploying a bill tracker – a tool for monitoring proposed, pending and enacted constitutional bills.

The problem, however, is that Kenyans do not read or visit such useful sites, preferring instead the easier route of embracing, without filtering, whatever they get from their political, religious and so-called FM radio “celebrities”.

ICTs and PUBLIC SERVICES

The report observes that due to the high penetration of mobile services, the government has been able to improve services.

Mobile money markets have also helped in making electronic payments and reducing the risks associated with handling physical cash.

Notable mentions go to the Kenya Revenue Authority’s iTax system, the government financial system IFMIS, the Huduma Centres and the eCitizen portal. Local governments have also not been left behind, with many of them adopting electronic revenue systems such as Nairobi’s parking system.

The challenge, however, remains, in that corruption persists both in the public and private sector. Just because money was paid electronically doesn’t mean it can’t also be stolen electronically.

ICTs AND CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT

Here is where Kenyans have excelled, particularly Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT). Using the power of social media, the report cites several instances where Twitter campaigns were mounted, leading to a change of action or policy.

#SpeechYa500K led the government to abandon flying the President’s Madaraka Day speech to far-flung counties at the cost of 500,000 shillings while #AngloLeasing got the government hard-pressed to explain why it was making further payments to shadowy contractors.

#SomeoneTellCNN has also been used to get CNN to apologise for negative publicity, while #TintedWindows spared Kenya’s middle class from a police directive that would have compelled them to remove their much-valued tinted film from their car windows.

In summary, ICTs have indeed come a long way and have played a significant role in the governance framework. We must be cautious, however, since ICTs cut both ways – they can be used positively or negatively.

This article was first published by the Daily Nation.

20Jan

In Search of Local Knowledge on ICTS in Africa

admin January 20, 2015

By reviewing and comparing literature on the role of ICTs in statebuilding and peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on neighboring Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, this paper examines whether the claims of the transformative power of ICTs are backed by evidence and whether local knowledge – e.g., traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution – is taken into consideration by ICT-based initiatives. Several key findings emerged, including: 1) empirical evidence on the successful use of ICTs to promote peacebuilding and statebuilding is thin; 2) few differences exist between scholarship emanating from the Global North and from Africa; and 3) the literature exhibits a simplistic assumption that ICTs will drive democratic development without sufficient consideration of how ICTs are actually used by the public.
Download the full paper here.

19Mar

AfricaICTResearch.org: New Portal on ICTs, State and Peace Building Research in Africa

admin March 19, 2014

Although the use of Information and Communication Technologies by citizens and governments in Africa is growing exponentially, there is limited evidence of how these technologies are affecting statebuilding and peace building on the continent. Where such evidence exists, it is often in diverse locations and hard to reach for researchers, practitioners, the media and government bodies.
In order to increase access to information on ICTs in Africa, the Centre for Global Communications Studies (CGCS) at the University of Pennsylvania has launched a new website that offers news and updates on research and events related to ICTs, peace building and governance. The portal features a repository of reports and articles with empirical evidence on the role of ICTs in peace building and governance.
In addition, the website offers access to articles typically blocked by journal paywalls by obtaining pre-print versions of articles from authors.
As a partner in CGCS’s project titled “Reframing Local Knowledge: ICTs, State building, and Peace building in Eastern Africa”, CIPESA undertook a review of literature on the role of ICTs in governance, peace-building and state-building in Africa, with a focus on three neighbouring countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
An increasing number of Africa’s estimated one billion people are accessing modern communication technologies. According to the International Telecommunications Union, as of 2013, internet penetration stood at 16% and mobile access at 63% of Africa’s population.
It follows that online service provision, placing a wide array of information in the public domain, an empowered citizenry that holds leaders to account and smartly embrace ICT, could potentially catalyse peace, democracy and good governance in Africa.
There is a considerable amount of research by scholars, government agencies, civil society, development partners and many more on the use of ICTs in governance in Africa, covering a broad range of definitions and dimensions. A central place to find this research has hitherto been lacking, which is why scholars, practitioners and public officials will find the new portal a vital resource.
The work for the project is being carried out in collaboration with the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP) at the University of Oxford, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology at Strathmore University (Kenya), the School of Journalism and Communication at Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), CIPESA, The Heritage Institute for Policy Studies and SIMAD University (Somalia).
Read more about the project here.

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Tag Archives: Governance

By John Walubengo |