Kenya Judiciary

The first Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance, convening in Geneva on 6–7 July 2026, will succeed not by producing a perfect document, but by producing genuine progress on the questions that matter most to the people most affected by AI — and who are least represented in the rooms where AI governance is decided. Success, in my assessment, requires five concrete outcomes. First, the Dialogue must produce a shared, operationalisable understanding of what "safe, secure, and trustworthy AI" means across different national contexts, legal traditions, and levels of technological development. Principles without definitions are not governance. Second, it must yield specific, funded commitments to bridge the AI divide — not aspirational language about capacity-building, but concrete pledges of technical assistance, compute access, open data, and training resources targeted at developing countries, including African nations that are governed by AI systems they did not design and cannot yet audit. Third, the Dialogue must establish a meaningful human rights accountability framework — one that goes beyond transparency rhetoric to specify who is responsible when AI systems cause harm, and how affected individuals and communities can seek redress. Fourth, it must produce a genuine multi-stakeholder consensus on interoperability — agreeing that the diversity of national AI governance approaches is a strength to be coordinated, not a fragmentation to be resolved by the most powerful actors imposing their frameworks on the rest. Fifth, and most fundamentally, success requires that the voices of the Global South — of the judiciaries, civil society organisations, communities, and individuals who will be most profoundly shaped by AI governance decisions — are not merely present but genuinely heard. A Dialogue that reaches consensus among the powerful while sidelining the marginalised will have succeeded procedurally and failed morally. The measure of Geneva 2026 is whether it advances justice, not merely efficiency.

• Safe, secure and trustworthy AI
• AI capacity-building
• Social, economic, ethical, cultural, linguistic and technical implications of AI
• Protection and promotion of human rights

Kenya's leverage: As Africa's leading technology hub and a country with a functioning Data Protection Act and a growing AI policy framework, Kenya is well-positioned to lead African voices on this thematic area. Kenya's experience of navigating AI development in a resource-constrained environment, and its demonstrated capacity for innovation in contexts where conventional technological infrastructure is absent as exemplified by M-Pesa gives its voice particular credibility and authenticity on questions of AI development beyond the Global North paradigm. Kenya's leverage: Kenya's unique position as a country that has pioneered mobile financial services, digital agricultural information systems, and technology-enabled public administration gives it credible, evidence-based standing on the social and economic implications of AI. Kenya's linguistic diversity makes it a natural advocate for multilingual AI standards that serve the full diversity of Africa's communicative landscape. Kenya's constitutional framework with its strong transparency and accountability provisions gives it a powerful domestic grounding for advocacy on international AI transparency and accountability standards. Kenya's experience of the transparency and accountability failures of platform algorithms, government AI systems, and AI-assisted decision-making gives its advocacy concrete, evidence-based substance. And Kenya's position as one of Africa's most digitally advanced economies makes it a credible voice on the specific transparency and accountability challenges of AI deployment in the developing world context.

1. AI and the Rule of Law - The Governance Gap in Judicial Systems The four clusters address human rights and transparency but none specifically addresses the implications of AI for the administration of justice; the courts, tribunals, and dispute resolution mechanisms that are the ultimate enforcers of every right the Dialogue seeks to protect. This is a structural omission. You cannot have enforceable human rights, transparent accountability, or trustworthy AI without functional, AI-literate justice systems capable of adjudicating AI-related disputes. 2. AI and Intellectual Property - The Knowledge Governance Crisis Kenya's rich cultural heritage, its creative industries, and its traditional knowledge systems are all at risk from AI-enabled IP extraction. Kenya should advocate for the inclusion of AI and intellectual property as a formal agenda item, and should work with WIPO to develop this agenda in coordination with the Global Dialogue process. 3. AI and Children's Rights - The Most Vulnerable Users International standards specifically addressing AI systems designed for or frequently used by children Child-specific data protection requirements that go beyond the general frameworks applicable to adults Age-appropriate transparency requirements ensuring children can understand how AI systems affect them Governance frameworks for AI in educational settings that protect children's privacy, academic integrity, and developmental interests

Kenya occupies a paradoxical position in the global AI landscape. As the birthplace of M-Pesa and one of Africa's most dynamic technology ecosystems, Kenya has demonstrated that transformative digital innovation is possible in a developing country context. Yet the governance gaps in the four priority thematic areas of GA Resolution 79/325 are generating real, documented, and escalating harms across our economy, justice system, democratic institutions, and communities. On capacity gaps: Kenya's Data Protection Act 2019 exists on paper but enforcement capacity is severely limited. Our courts encounter AI-generated evidence, deepfakes, and algorithmic decision-making without jurisprudential frameworks to evaluate them. Our judicial officers, regulators, and policymakers lack the technical literacy to govern AI systems they cannot audit or understand. The opportunity here is significant — Kenya's existing digital infrastructure, legal framework, and innovation ecosystem provide a strong foundation if international capacity-building support is genuinely forthcoming. On human rights: AI-generated disinformation demonstrably affected Kenya's 2017 and 2022 elections. Commercial spyware has been deployed against Kenyan civil society. Millions of Kenyans face opaque algorithmic decisions in credit, employment, and public services with no meaningful appeal. The #GenZKenya protests of 2024 showed both the mobilising power and the manipulation risk of AI-mediated political communication. On social, economic, and linguistic implications: AI systems that cannot serve Swahili, Kikuyu, or Luo exclude millions of Kenyans from AI's benefits while leaving them unprotected from its harms. Agricultural AI designed for large-scale commercial farming is poorly suited to Kenya's smallholder-dominated economy. On transparency and accountability: Platform companies operating in Kenya face minimal local regulatory accountability. When their algorithms amplify ethnic division or election disinformation, Kenyan citizens have no effective remedy.

A Bridge Between Technology and Policy

A common framework for assessing advanced frontier AI models. An AI infrastructure access framework. A global political declaration setting minimum standards for content authenticity and platform obligations in human‑machine interaction environments (e.g., elections).

Private Sector & Industry Providing technical expertise and implementing solutions Sharing deployment data, developing safety evaluations, committing to responsible innovation

Technical & Academic Communities by training the next generation

Side events hosted by interest groups

▸ The Global Dialogue should produce specific, funded commitments to bridge the AI divide - not aspirational language. These commitments should include dedicated investment in high-performance computing infrastructure in developing countries, support for African AI research institutions, and the development of open AI models trained on African data. ▸ The Dialogue should call for a fundamental restructuring of representation in international AI governance bodies, ensuring that developing countries and their civil society stakeholders participate as co-architects rather than as consultees. ▸ Open-source AI models, open data initiatives, and open AI standards should be prioritised as tools for bridging the AI divide, with specific commitments to support their adoption and localisation in African contexts.