Projects

This research project examines how African‑led AI innovations can be responsibly adopted and scaled to improve equity, learning outcomes, and system efficiency in education. Led by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), it seeks to generate evidence, frameworks, and policy guidance to support ethical, inclusive AI in African education systems.

The AI4GH initiative supports robust, innovative and interdisciplinary research projects and processes across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa. Each activity within AI4GH promotes ‘responsible AI’ (solutions that are ethical, inclusive, rights-respecting and sustainable) that aims to strengthen gender equality and inclusion, and integrate plans for sustainability, scale and influence. This initiative aims to build regional and global networks across a range of actors, including researchers, policymakers, practitioners, the private sector and civil society.

This project amplifies Global South-led research on responsible AI for health, addressing gaps in implementation studies. It leverages the AI for Global Health knowledge hub to generate data-driven insights, share stories of change, and influence policies and innovations. Through knowledge products and networking, it enhances visibility, scale, and sustainability of AI for global health initiatives.

The Hub for AI and Disability Inclusion (HAIDI) is Africa’s first continent‑wide platform dedicated to embedding disability inclusion across the AI lifecycle. The Hub seeks to strengthen inclusive AI ecosystems by developing disability‑representative data, supporting scalable inclusive AI innovations, and advancing disability‑inclusive AI governance to ensure AI delivers meaningful benefits for people with disabilities across Africa.

AfriLab strengthens public universities’ capacity for multidisciplinary, responsible AI research. It fosters gender-inclusive methodologies, community building, and teaching excellence while supporting AI deployment from academia to industry.

AI’s potential to transform development is immense—but without rigorous evaluation, it risks reinforcing inequalities and misallocating resources. This project fills a critical gap by embedding evaluation into AI4D’s design and implementation, helping identify “good bets” in AI for development and ensuring that technologies benefit marginalized populations.

The AI4D Responsible AI Collaborators Initiative is a strategic program managed by the Lab for Ethics, Policy and Scaling of AI (LEPSAI) to ensure African AI innovations are ethical, inclusive, and scalable. By providing tailored technical and GEDI (Gender, Equality, and Diversity) mentorship, the initiative bridges the gap between theoretical ethics and practical implementation. It focuses on addressing intersectional marginalization and aligning solutions with UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of AI to foster a resilient, locally-driven ecosystem that promotes social, economic, and environmental sustainability across sub-Saharan Africa.

This project promotes responsible AI in Southern Africa by producing high-quality research to inform policymaking, strengthening policymakers’ technical and governance capacities, and building alliances with AI policy stakeholders. It ensures AI adoption aligns with African realities, mitigating risks to human rights and inequality while maximizing its potential for economic growth and sustainable development

Ethiopia is tackling major development challenges in sectors like agriculture, healthcare, energy, and governance, made worse by climate risks and limited AI capacity.The Resonance Lab at Addis Ababa University aims to respond by creating ethical, locally relevant AI solutions, including tools for precision farming, AI-driven healthcare, and data-based governance. The lab will also strengthen local expertise through graduate training and regional collaboration, promoting inclusive and sustainable AI applications.

This flagship initiative will create high‑quality, open‑source, culturally grounded multimodal datasets—spanning text, speech and vision—across 40 African languages. By anchoring this work in the Masakhane community, a grassroots, expert-led organization that champions participatory methods, the project aims to shift Africa from being a data-poor consumer of AI technologies to a globally recognized contributor to ethical and inclusive AI innovation. Emerging from the AI for Development Funders Collaborative, it represents a cross-donor effort, with parallel funding from IDRC, the UK’s FCDO, the Gates Foundation, and Google.org.

The RobotsMali AI4D Lab strengthens AI research and innovation in Francophone Sahel countries by overcoming language barriers and building local capacity. It fosters collaboration among universities, government, and industry to enhance AI education, literacy, and research while incubating AI-powered startups. The lab prioritizes ethical AI, gender inclusion, and community-driven development.

The Deep Learning Indaba strengthens Africa’s AI community by hosting annual conferences, bridging the gap between global advancements and local capacity. Supported by AI4D, it offers scholarships for women and people with disabilities, funds an “Ideathon” for development challenges, and ensures sustainability through multi-year planning, fostering responsible AI innovation across the continent.

This project strengthens responsible AI solutions to improve sexual, reproductive, and maternal health in the Middle East and North Africa. Building on the Global Health and AI Network’s earlier efforts, it focuses on scaling innovations, strengthening researcher capacity, and fostering collaboration to enhance health outcomes for women and communities in the region.

The Africa Compute Initiative (ACI) tackles one of the most binding constraints on African AI innovation: lack of affordable, reliable access to high‑performance compute. ACI will establish Africa’s first high‑performance compute cluster dedicated to development‑focused, university‑based AI research, hosted at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and complemented by flexible cloud access through the Mozilla Foundation. By combining on‑premise GPU infrastructure with action research on access models, governance, and sustainability, ACI enables African researchers and students to train, fine‑tune, and deploy AI models locally, rather than relying on prohibitively expensive off‑continent cloud services.

Building on AI4D’s first phase, this project strengthens responsible and inclusive AI in Francophone West Africa by fostering policy co-creation, demystifying AI for the public, and focusing on capacity building while upholding human rights and equality.

This initiative leverages responsible AI to support smallholder farmers, women, and youth in Africa’s agriculture sector. It generates evidence on AI’s impact, promotes inclusive innovation, and enhances capacity through knowledge sharing and network building. By addressing key challenges, it drives scalable AI solutions that advance sustainable and equitable food systems across the continent.

This project builds evidence and practical tools for responsibly scaling AI in health systems across the Global South. Through seed grants and case studies, it supports equitable, sustainable AI solutions addressing sexual and reproductive health and climate‑sensitive epidemics.

The Asia AI4D Observatory is a three‑year initiative to accelerate responsible AI governance and innovation across South and Southeast Asia, addressing urgent risks of inequity and rights violations as AI use rapidly expands across the region. Led by LIRNEasia, the East‑West Management Institute, Just Jobs Network, and EngageMedia, it leverages regional momentum and global best practices to ensure AI adoption advances development goals and builds inclusive, rights‑based AI ecosystems that protect marginalized groups and promote gender equality.

CITADEL is a regional hub for AI research in French-speaking Africa. It advances interdisciplinary research, contextualizes AI solutions for real-world challenges, trains diverse talent for local industry needs, and fosters responsible AI innovation to drive sustainable development across Burkina Faso and the broader sub-region.

RAIL addresses AI adoption challenges in sub-Saharan Africa by fostering responsible, multidisciplinary research and innovation. It strengthens local talent, prioritizes inclusivity, and develops AI solutions for key sectors like health, agriculture, and assistive technologies. In its second phase, RAIL expands its focus on vulnerable communities, energy, food security, and women’s participation in technology.

HealthAI strengthens regulatory capacity for AI in health in two African countries by co-creating frameworks, providing training and technical support, and fostering collaboration among policymakers, regulators, and AI researchers, ensuring responsible and trusted AI adoption in health care.

The AI Climate Innovation Hub will accelerate locally led, responsible AI innovations that strengthen climate resilience across Sub‑Saharan Africa, guiding at least four high‑impact tools toward scale. By unlocking critical climate datasets, building African research capacity, and generating evidence on AI’s environmental footprint, the Hub ensures African expertise shapes national, regional, and global climate‑AI policy.

AI development in Africa faces challenges like data gaps, limited skills, and insufficient innovations in key sectors. The Data Innovation Centre for AI tackles these issues in Senegal and beyond by strengthening AI skills, producing high-quality data, fostering responsible AI solutions, and promoting inclusion, particularly for women and disadvantaged groups, in the AI ecosystem.

The Evaluating AI for Development Use Cases project, coordinated by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will generate and share actionable research on how AI affects development outcomes, with a focus on Africa and Asia.

The Gender and Responsible AI Network (GRAIN) Scaling Hub fosters inclusive AI innovations in Africa, ensuring tools address bias and benefit women and underrepresented groups. It develops guidelines, supports scalable solutions, and engages AI ecosystem actors to promote gender, diversity, and inclusion in AI, advancing responsible and impactful AI for social and economic challenges.

Responsible AI can tackle Africa’s development challenges, but scaling real-world solutions is critical. This project establishes a lab to guide scaling efforts, mentor innovators, and develop use cases, enhancing collaboration and advancing an inclusive AI ecosystem across the continent.

Infectious disease outbreaks, including mpox, are growing in frequency and severity, driven by factors like zoonosis and reverse zoonosis. This project adopts a One Health approach to address root causes and strengthen public health systems using Africa-led AI and modelling. It will optimize surveillance, vaccination strategies, and equitable health access across several African nations.

The Global Index on Responsible AI offers a comprehensive benchmark of countries' commitment to responsible AI, specifically ensuring human rights protections. This project will track emerging trends over time, amplify marginalised voices and provide actionable recommendations to policymakers to align technological advancements with ethical principles and societal wellbeing.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, access to quality sexual and maternal health services remains unequal, especially for disadvantaged women and girls. This project builds on AI innovations to address barriers and expand impact, fostering research, capacity building, and collaboration with policymakers and communities for sustainable change.

The AI Network of Labs, supported by the AI for Development (AI4D) initiative, connects research and innovation laboratories across Africa to advance responsible, locally relevant artificial intelligence. Operating in multiple countries, the network addresses key development challenges across sectors such as health, agriculture, education, climate, language technologies, and AI governance, while strengthening local capacity and collaboration.

This project unlocks the potential of African-language-based AI by addressing NLP challenges, improving data for African languages, strengthening capacity through training and mentorship, and influencing policy to develop inclusive, impactful AI solutions across various sectors.

The African Hub on AI Safety, Peace and Security is the first initiative of its kind on the continent focused on addressing the real-world risks, harms, and opportunities of artificial intelligence through an African lens. The Hub is co-ed by the Global Center on AI Governance (GCG) in partnership with the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Disease outbreaks are rising globally, especially in climate-vulnerable regions of the Global South. This project scales responsible AI solutions to improve public health preparedness for infectious diseases like malaria and dengue, focusing on underrepresented populations through collaboration with communities, researchers, and policymakers.

This project supports responsible AI mentorship for innovators, focusing on GEDI, and strengthens GEDI capacity through learning partnerships, training, and AI4D collaborations. It also fosters co-produced research to develop key publications on responsible AI and GEDI in Africa.

This project develops and pilots the Teacher Professional Development Course Customizer (TPDCC), a human‑centred, AI‑supported tool that seeks to enable education institutions to adapt TPD courses for diverse teacher groups at scale. It advances equitable, context‑responsive professional learning and demonstrates responsible uses of generative AI in education systems.

Building on its earlier successes, this extended initiative aims to further empower African Union (AU) member states to harness artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly and inclusively to drive sustainable development. Implemented by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the project aligns with the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy and emphasizes the role of AI in addressing Africa’s unique challenges, including health, education, food systems, and climate change.

AI is increasingly used in education, but in Africa, its impact is held back by poor data, limited local language support, and ethical concerns. These challenges mostly affect marginalized groups. This project, building on work from the EduAI Hub, will develop AI models in Hausa and Yoruba, create personalized learning tools for underserved communities, and strengthen ethical AI practices in education. The goal is to make education more inclusive and support SDGs 4 and 5.

This project supports Dedan Kimathi University’s Centre for Data Science and AI in Kenya as a multidisciplinary lab. It develops responsible AI innovations for environmental, health, and agricultural challenges, strengthens early-career researcher capacity, and fosters collaboration to grow Africa’s AI ecosystem.

The African Observatory on Responsible AI drives responsible AI governance across the continent. This project strengthens its role by producing knowledge, influencing policies, and building policymaker capacity to address AI-related inequalities and promote inclusive governance at national, regional, and global levels.

Rwanda sees Artificial Intelligence (AI) as key to transforming into a knowledge-based economy. However, gaps in skills and research remain. The TAIRI Lab at the University of Rwanda builds AI capacity and develops ethical solutions for agriculture, health, and the environment, fostering collaboration, innovation, and responsible AI practices tailored to Rwanda’s needs.

Born out of the AI for Development Funders’ Collaborative, the AI Evidence Alliance for Social Impact is the first phase of a broader collaboration among global funders focused on advancing AI evaluation. It represents a cross-donor effort, co-financed by IDRC, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Community Jameel, and Google.org.

The East African AI Policy Center, led by CIPIT at Strathmore University, advances responsible AI policy in the region. It focuses on ethical, inclusive, and sustainable AI through research, fostering collaboration, addressing power imbalances, and promoting gender awareness. The initiative supports local and regional governments in adopting AI policies tailored to East Africa’s unique needs.

AI is key to achieving sustainable development and economic growth while ensuring sovereignty. This project supports the AI Living Lab in Dakar, Senegal, fostering innovation through a collaborative platform, cutting-edge research on responsible AI, and promotion of AI among youth, decision-makers, and socio-economic actors.

The AI Sarosh hub in South Asia supports AI solutions in SRMH, including adolescent health, early depression detection, and affordable imaging tools. This project focuses on field evaluations, addressing policy gaps, and scaling responsible AI innovations, while fostering collaboration among health and AI experts.

This project establishes the Makerere University AI for Development Research Lab as a leader in responsible AI in Africa. It supports research, capacity building, and solutions for challenges in health, agriculture, climate, and language processing while strengthening a pan-African AI research network.

The AI for Maternal, Sexual, and Reproductive Health Hub in sub-Saharan Africa scales promising AI innovations to improve health outcomes. It strengthens AI innovators’ capacity to develop solutions using large datasets and supports the deployment of AI tools in five countries, including new innovations from an open competition, ensuring ethical and impactful AI applications.

This project will produce high quality, gender transformative research on strengthening responsible AI applications and using that evidence to influence policy. It will put women, people with disabilities, indigenous people, migrants and other in a leadership position in exploring how to catalyze AI for their benefit and the benefit of those around them. The project will also support capacity building on inclusive AI throughout the region, preparing the next generation of researchers and AI developers to build inclusive AI, adopt responsible AI principles and influence decision makers toward AI as a tool for the public good.