In March 2024, President William Ruto appointed Ambassador Philip Thigo, MBS as Kenya’s special envoy on technology, making Kenya the first African nation to create such a position. What followed over the next two years is nothing short of a masterclass in deliberate, strategic positioning on the global AI governance stage.
Today, Kenya stands as the only African nation among the founding members of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes. It has championed the first-ever UN resolution on the environmental sustainability of artificial intelligence. Its national AI strategy, launched in March 2025, positions the country as Africa’s leading AI innovation hub. And its special envoy on technology has been named in Apolitical’s Government AI 100 list for two consecutive years, in 2025 and 2026, alongside figures such as the UAE’s minister of state for artificial intelligence and the UN secretary-general’s technology envoy.
The question for the remaining 53 African nations is simple: What did Kenya build that others haven’t? And what would it take to replicate it?
The architecture of influence
Kenya’s AI governance success rests on three deliberate choices.
First, Kenya created a dedicated institutional home for technology diplomacy.
When President Ruto appointed Ambassador Philip Thigo as special envoy on technology in March 2024, he didn’t just fill a position, he created an interface between domestic policy and global governance conversations. The Office of the Special Envoy on Technology now serves as Kenya’s diplomatic mission for emerging technologies, housed within the Office of the President and the State Department for Foreign Affairs.
This matters because AI governance is increasingly shaped in multilateral forums where traditional diplomatic channels often lack technical fluency. Kenya’s technology envoy speaks the languages both of diplomacy and technology, and has the mandate to represent Kenya in spaces where most African nations have no seat.
Global positioning without domestic foundation is hollow. Kenya understood this.
Second, Kenya secured positions on the bodies that shape global AI norms. In October 2023, the UN secretary-general appointed Philip Thigo to the High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, a 39-member body comprising gender-balanced, geographically diverse experts tasked with providing recommendations for international AI governance. Thigo became one of only six Africans on this body, which produced the influential ‘Governing AI for Humanity’ report that informed the Global Digital Compact.
Then, in November 2024, Kenya joined the International Network of AI Safety Institutes as a founding member, alongside Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. This network, first convened in San Francisco, represents the primary mechanism for international coordination on AI safety science.
At the UN General Assembly in March 2024, when 193 member states unanimously adopted the first-ever resolution on artificial intelligence, – promoting ‘safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems for sustainable development’ – Kenya was among the original co-sponsors.
Third, Kenya used convening power strategically.
In December 2025, Kenya hosted the seventh session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) in Nairobi. But Kenya didn’t merely host, it led. The delegation championed and secured adoption of the first-ever UN resolution specifically addressing the environmental sustainability of artificial intelligence systems. This resolution, proposed by Kenya, mandates the UN Environment Programme to produce a report on ‘environmental benefits, risks and impacts of artificial intelligence’ covering everything from energy and water consumption to mineral demands and electronic waste.
As Ambassador Thigo stated following the resolution’s adoption: ‘This resolution is a recognition that artificial intelligence will shape the planet as profoundly as it shapes economies. Africa cannot afford to be an observer in this transformation.’
The policy foundation
Global positioning without domestic foundation is hollow. Kenya understood this.
On 27 March 2025, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy launched the Kenya National AI Strategy 2025-2030 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre. The strategy, developed through a consultative process that began in April 2024, positions Kenya as ‘a regional leader in AI research, innovation, and commercialization for inclusive socio-economic development’.
The strategy rests on three foundational pillars:
AI digital infrastructure: modernising national digital infrastructure, expanding 5G connectivity, establishing local data centres for high-performance computing and leveraging green energy sources for AI infrastructure.
Data: establishing a robust and sustainable data ecosystem, including governance frameworks, secure data sharing protocols and quality AI training datasets.
AI research and innovation: developing cutting-edge, localised AI models and solutions through thriving local R&D and commercialisation.
Four cross-cutting enablers support these pillars: governance and regulatory frameworks, talent development and AI literacy, investment mobilisation and ethics, equity and inclusion.
The strategy identifies priority use cases across sectors aligned with Kenya’s bottom-up economic transformation agenda and Vision 2030: healthcare, education, agriculture, public service delivery, security, micro and small and medium enterprises, the creative sector and sustainability.
Importantly, Kenya’s strategy explicitly aligns with both the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy (endorsed in July 2024) and global frameworks, positioning the country as a bridge between continental ambitions and international governance conversations.
The precedent: how M-Pesa proves the model
Kenya’s AI governance leadership isn’t emerging from nowhere. It follows a pattern established seventeen years earlier with mobile money.
When Safaricom launched M-Pesa in March 2007, Kenya became the laboratory for an experiment that would reshape financial inclusion globally. Today, M-Pesa serves 34 million customers in Kenya alone, with over 300,000 agents nationwide. The platform processes transactions that, by some measures, approach half of Kenya’s annual gross domestic product.
But M-Pesa’s significance extends beyond transaction volumes. A seminal 2016 study published in Science by Tavneet Suri of MIT and William Jack of Georgetown University found that access to M-Pesa increased per capita consumption levels and lifted an estimated 194,000 Kenyan households – roughly 2 per cent of all households – out of extreme poverty between 2008 and 2014.1 The impacts were more pronounced for female-headed households, with an estimated 185,000 women shifting from subsistence agriculture to business and retail occupations.
According to the FinAccess Household Survey, the percentage of Kenyan adults with access to formal financial services increased from 26.7 per cent in 2006 to 83.7 per cent in 2021 driven largely by mobile money adoption.2
The M-Pesa story demonstrates something essential about Kenya’s approach to technology governance: the willingness to create enabling regulatory environments that allow innovation to scale, combined with the institutional capacity to study, document and communicate impact globally.
Kenya is applying the same playbook to AI.
The recognition
The international community has taken notice. Ambassador Philip Thigo has accumulated a portfolio of recognition that reflects Kenya’s rising influence.3
These individual recognitions matter because they reflect institutional positioning. When Kenya’s technology envoy is consistently named alongside the UAE’s minister of state for AI and the UN secretary-general’s technology envoy, it signals that Kenya has achieved peer status in global AI governance conversations.
What this means for the AAGI
This is precisely why the African AI Governance Index (AAGI) exists.
Kenya’s success demonstrates that AI governance leadership is achievable for African nations but it also reveals how few countries have built the architecture to achieve it. As of July 2025, only 16 African countries have launched national AI strategies. Kenya became the 16th when it launched its strategy in March 2025. Over 30 African nations remain at the early or inactive stage with no clear AI roadmap.
The gap between Kenya and most African nations isn’t resources. It’s coordination. It’s measurement. It’s building the institutions that make success legible and learnable.
The AAGI is designed to enable exactly this: not to rank countries against each other, but to create a learning system for the continent. When we assess Kenya’s AI governance across our eight pillars, including policy & strategy, institutional capacity, data governance, the innovation ecosystem, and rights & ethics, we’re creating a blueprint that other nations can study and adapt.
Kenya shows what’s possible. The AAGI will show how to get there.
The path forward
Kenya’s AI governance leadership offers several lessons for the continent:
Create dedicated institutional capacity. A special envoy on technology or equivalent provides a focal point for coordinating domestic policy with international engagement. Without this, countries will continue to be represented in global forums by generalist diplomats who lack the technical fluency to shape conversations.
Secure seats at the tables that matter. The UN High-Level Advisory Body on AI, the International Network of AI Safety Institutes and similar bodies are where global AI norms are being defined. African nations must actively pursue membership rather than wait to be invited.
Use convening power strategically. Kenya’s championing of the UNEA-7 AI sustainability resolution demonstrates that hosting international forums creates opportunities to set agendas, not just participate in them.
Align domestic policy with continental and global frameworks. Kenya’s national AI strategy explicitly references both the African Union Continental AI Strategy and international best practices. This creates interoperability and signals credibility to global partners.
Document and communicate impact. Kenya’s M-Pesa success is known globally because researchers studied it rigorously and published their findings in high-impact journals. The same discipline must apply to AI governance initiatives.
The next five years will determine whether Africa is a consumer of AI governance frameworks designed elsewhere or a co-author of the rules that will shape how this technology transforms economies and societies worldwide.
Kenya has chosen to be an author. The question for the rest of the continent is whether it will join Kenya in writing the story.
and then