BY FAITH SUDI
Artificial Intelligence has long been painted as a threat to jobs. Whenever it comes up outside tech circles, the first reaction is often fear: “Will it replace me?”
While some professions may be disrupted, AI also opens new doors for creativity, efficiency and innovation. Whether it is a threat or an opportunity depends on how societies choose to adapt and use it.
Take Saudi Arabia, once ranked among the most restrictive countries for women. In 2018 it was still illegal for them to drive. However, in recent days, the Kingdom has been repositioning itself as a leader in women’s empowerment through technology.
Until March 2022, women could not marry, travel, study, or even seek medical treatment without male approval. Yet in a dramatic shift, Saudi Arabia was recently ranked the top country globally in empowering women in AI, thanks to its Vision 2030 strategy that places gender equality and technology at its core.
Kenya, by contrast, risks moving in the opposite direction. Despite its reputation as Africa’s “Silicon Savannah,” recent events reveal deep contradictions. During the Gen-Z led protests, the youth turned to Generative AI to power civic education by summarizing the Finance Bill 2024, translating complex policy documents into local languages, creating graphics that exposed corruption and producing cartoons and illustrations that spread rapidly online. AI became a people’s tool for transparency and accountability.
The response from the ruling class was swift, with calls for tighter control. Out of this backlash emerged the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill 2025, a proposal that would hand the government unprecedented access to citizens’ private online lives. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would be compelled to assign every user a traceable ID number, monitor their consumption, and share detailed records with authorities. Provisions which make even Draco’s laws sound lenient.
This is the wrong path. A nation celebrated as Africa’s tech hub should be setting the benchmark for responsible and liberative AI, not silencing innovation through surveillance. Instead of criminalizing the ingenuity of its youth, Kenya should harness it. The creative use of ChatGPT and other tools during the protests was not a threat to democracy but it was democracy in action.
Kenya now faces a quandary: To let AI become an instrument of control or to embrace it as a liberative arm that empowers citizens, strengthens transparency and cements its place as a continental leader in technology. The world is watching.
Faith Sudi is a strategic communications expert and Aula Fellow
