AfroGAIN is pleased to announce that our project, Digital Shadows: Extraction, Resistance, and Innovation in Africa’s Tech Futures (AfroTech), has been awarded €2,000 under the College of Business, Public Policy & Law’s Strategic Research Seed Funding Scheme. The award recognises AfroTech’s strong alignment with the scheme’s objectives: enabling future external funding applications and strengthening international research collaborations.

On 3 September 2025, Dr Thompson Kwarkye, Principal Investigator for AfroGAIN, presented his research “AI Governance in the Global Context: Perspectives from Africa” at Lero’s Annual Conference hosted by the University of Limerick. His presentation examined how global frameworks for regulating artificial intelligence—such as the European Union’s AI Act—intersect with African contexts, highlighting the opportunities and challenges of implementing ethical, sociocultural, and political dimensions of AI governance across the continent.

AfroGAIN investigates how political, socio-cultural and ethical processes shape AI governance and what this means for balancing innovation and ethics in Ghana and South Africa. The need for this research is built on AI as a ‘double-edged sword’ that can help meet Africa's development aspirations while possessing potential risks such as algorithmic biases and human rights concerns. Critics also point to AI's possible negative geopolitical impacts on the continent, particularly as major powers, including the US, EU, and China, compete to establish partnerships within Africa’s AI ecosystems, each promoting different standards.