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The Hidden Costs of Technological Colonialism in Africa
The Hidden Costs of Technological Colonialism in Africa
Sputnik Africa
With artificial intelligence now embedded in several of Africa's key economic sectors. researchers warn that global safety frameworks have failed to reckon... 15.05.2026, Sputnik Africa
2026-05-15T14:03+0200
2026-05-15T14:03+0200
2026-05-15T14:03+0200
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The Hidden Costs of Technological Colonialism in Africa
Sputnik Africa
With artificial intelligence now embedded in several of Africa's key economic sectors. researchers warn that global safety frameworks have failed to reckon with a troubling reality. Many of these systems were built to extract and export data off the continent exposing millions to algorithmic decisions made without accountability and oversight.
African AI ethicists, researchers, technologists, and policy advocates are raising alarm against global artificial intelligence governance architecture. This is against the backdrop of decades-long pattern in which powerful Western tech giants have entered the continent to harvest its data, route its digital infrastructure through foreign servers, set the terms of its connectivity, and walk away with the value, leaving African governments holding systems they did not build, cannot fully control, and were never designed for mutual benefit. This dynamic is what scholars term technological subjugation by other means, one that the rapid expansion of AI is not disrupting but accelerating.African Currents sat down with Dr. Edmund Terem Ugar, a South African AI governance expert and researcher, to examine how artificial intelligence represents a new tool of colonialism in Africa, where Western tech firms extract African data to train AI systems that are then sold back to the continent at a profit, while deliberately sidelining African knowledge systems and values, and producing technologies that marginalize African epistemologies.Catch the full discussion on the African Currents podcast, presented by Sputnik Africa.Listen to this episode on our website or Telegram.► You can also stream the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, Pocket Casts, Afripods, Podcast Addict.► Subscribe to and explore all the episodes of African Currents.
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The Hidden Costs of Technological Colonialism in Africa
With artificial intelligence now embedded in several of Africa's key economic sectors. researchers warn that global safety frameworks have failed to reckon with a troubling reality. Many of these systems were built to extract and export data off the continent exposing millions to algorithmic decisions made without accountability and oversight.
African AI ethicists, researchers, technologists, and policy advocates are raising alarm against global artificial intelligence governance architecture. This is against the backdrop of decades-long pattern in which powerful Western tech giants have entered the continent to harvest its data, route its digital infrastructure through foreign servers, set the terms of its connectivity, and walk away with the value, leaving African governments holding systems they did not build, cannot fully control, and were never designed for mutual benefit. This dynamic is what scholars term technological subjugation by other means, one that the rapid expansion of AI is not disrupting but accelerating.
African Currents sat down with Dr. Edmund Terem Ugar, a South African AI governance expert and researcher, to examine how artificial intelligence represents a new tool of colonialism in Africa, where Western tech firms extract African data to train AI systems that are then sold back to the continent at a profit, while deliberately sidelining African knowledge systems and values, and producing technologies that marginalize African epistemologies.
"We are still grappling with coloniality and neocolonialism. And now we have this new concept, technological colonialism. And we must understand why technological colonialism is of importance. The reason why this is of important is because we are now rapidly or exponentially gravitated into a technological ecosystem where apparatus and instrument that control the states are now within the technological sphere [...]. Now in the 21st century, we've got artificial intelligence that is powered by data. So, data is of importance to the efficiency of this artificial intelligence, machine learning systems, and so on and so forth [...]. There's been massive deployment of AI tools in the Global South, especially sub-Saharan Africa, in our schools, in our healthcare, within the transport institutions and so on and so forth. But you realize that these technologies that have been deployed generate massive data [....] but then the problem there is of what benefits are we having? We are then producing more data that the capitalist institutions are then using to maximize or make efficient this technology, which is of capitalist benefit," Dr. Ugar noted.
Catch the full discussion on the African Currents podcast, presented by Sputnik Africa.
Listen to this episode on our website or
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