by SUNIL GENESS
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – IN a few days, I will travel from Johannesburg to Geneva for the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance, at the invitation of the United Nations.
I am not going as a spectator. I am going because the next chapter of artificial intelligence must not be written about Africa, around Africa, or for Africa. It must be written with Africa.
The timing is stark. On the eve of the Dialogue, the United Nations’ new Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, comprising 40 experts chosen from more than 2,600 candidates across 140 countries, released its first assessment, warning that AI’s spread could deepen global inequality and that “most countries, including many advanced economies, lack the technical expertise” to govern the most powerful systems (The Guardian).
Reuters reported the same panel cautioning that AI is now “outpacing scientific understanding and government policy” (Reuters). That report will be presented in the room I am entering.
This matters because AI is no longer a technology conversation. It is an economic power conversation. A jobs conversation. A sovereignty conversation. Stanford’s 2026 AI Index shows global corporate AI investment more than doubled in 2025 to about US$582 billion, with private investment alone up 127.5% to US$345 billion and generative AI funding growing by more than 200% (Stanford HAI). Money is moving. Rules are forming. The advantage is compounding.
Africa cannot arrive late.
The upside is real. The GSMA cites research suggesting that AI could add as much as US$2.9 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2030, equivalent to a 3% increase in annual GDP (GSMA). But a promise without infrastructure is only poetry. The ITU reports that just 38% of Africa’s population used the internet in 2024, compared with a global average of 68%, and only 23% in rural areas (ITU). Africa, home to roughly one in five people on Earth, accounts for less than 1% of the world’s data centre capacity (Bracewell).
There is the AI divide in one sentence: other regions are training frontier models; too many Africans are still waiting for affordable data.
Geneva is therefore not another conference. It is a seat at the rule-making table. The Global Dialogue was established by the UN General Assembly through Resolution A/RES/79/325 to give every nation, not only the most technologically advanced, a voice in how AI is governed (United Nations). Its first session runs on 6–7 July 2026 at Palexpo, back-to-back with the ITU’s AI for Good Summit, convening all 193 member states alongside the private sector, academia and civil society (UNESCO; ITU).
The room will matter. Secretary-General António Guterres, UN Tech Envoy Amandeep Singh Gill, ITU’s Doreen Bogdan-Martin and UNESCO’s Khaled El-Enany will sit at the centre of it, alongside member-state delegations and global business, research and civil society leaders (UNESCO). Africa must meet that room with clarity, not caution.
Our agenda should be simple and bold: AI governance that expands prosperity. That means compute access, skills investment, trusted data systems, open standards, local-language innovation, accountable public procurement and regulation that protects people without suffocating entrepreneurs. It means turning the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy into national roadmaps, investment pipelines and regional cooperation (African Union). This is technology diplomacy: 54 nations aligning where they can, rather than negotiating as 54 separate voices.
This is where I hope to add value.
As Director of Global Government Affairs & CSR for Africa at SAP, I work where government, enterprise technology and community impact meet. I see how digital systems can strengthen public finance, utilities, supply chains, skills and service delivery. Through corporate social responsibility, I also see the human side—digital inclusion, youth skills and community upliftment—and I know that trust, not technology, is the true precondition for adoption.
My doctoral research at the University of the Witwatersrand is titled *Towards an Anticipatory, Ubuntu-Informed, and Responsible AI Smart City Design in Lanseria Smart City*. Lanseria is not theoretical. It is South Africa’s planned post-apartheid smart city in Gauteng, advanced through the Greater Lanseria Master Plan prepared for the Gauteng Provincial Government following President Ramaphosa’s 2020 State of the Nation Address (Greater Lanseria Master Plan).
Lanseria gives my work a living test case, built on three questions the world needs to ask. Anticipatory governance asks: what risks can we foresee before they become crises? Ubuntu-informed design asks: who benefits, who is heard, and who is left out? Responsible AI asks: how do we build systems that are transparent and accountable enough to be trusted?
That is Africa’s contribution to Geneva—not imitation, but imagination with discipline. Ubuntu is not a slogan; it is a design principle: technology should enhance dignity, strengthen communities and distribute benefits fairly.
Get this right, and AI can help farmers, clinics, schools, cities and governments deliver services faster and more fairly. Get it wrong, and AI will deepen dependency, automate exclusion and turn data into another extractive industry.
So, I am going to Geneva with one conviction. Africa must not merely ask for a place at the table. Africa must help set the table and shape the terms of intelligence itself.
NB: Sunil Geness is the Director of Global Government Affairs & CSR for Africa, SAP; PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
– CAJ News