Adoption of a national artificial intelligence plan advocated at a seminar in Kinshasa

Kinshasa, May 21^st, 2025 (CPA) – The adoption of a national artificial intelligence plan was advocated on Wednesday during the second day of the third interdisciplinary and international symposium organised at the Omnia omnibus university in the municipality of Kasa-Vubu, in the centre of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. ‘Our country needs to adopt a national artificial intelligence (AI) plan, as several African countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Comoros and others are making progress thanks to the development of AI,’ has declared Philippe Faradja, a professor at the University of Kinshasa.

‘In Africa, we still need to resolve the problems of digital governance, the digital capacity of our human capital, and even that of the developers of algorithms, who are in short supply,’ he has added. According to him, the integration of AI in Africa is a subject of growing interest, offering both promising opportunities and formidable challenges, and raising questions about its impact on the socio-economic dynamic for sustainable development and the complexity of its operation. He pointed out that the evolution of AI required a great deal of attention, exploring its transformative potential, specifying that the challenges and risks it entails as well as its better understanding for the development of skills to be able to exploit it, regulate it and make the most of it to build a better future in Africa. « Without data, which is a coded representation of information, there is no artificial intelligence. We have to be good producers of AI data, ethical producers, avoid hate speech and discrimination against our country, and produce reliable content that meets future expectations », has said Allegray Bossay, a researcher in information and communication sciences.  The theme of this third interdisciplinary and international colloquium, being held from May 20th to 22nd 2025 under the patronage of Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, is ‘Artificial intelligence and the development of African societies: opportunities, questions and ethical issues’.