Oussama Elmerrahi
Data Manager • Internet Champion • LLM Trainer • Sustainability Expert
Paris, France
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Oussama Elmerrahi is a data manager based in France with a deep commitment to sustainability-driven data governance. His work focuses on optimizing data quality, security, and compliance while integrating sustainable and ethical practices into digital transformation strategies. By leveraging innovative data solutions, he empowers organizations to make informed, decision-making, mitigate risks, and address the challenges of complex data environments.
With experience spanning diverse sectors, he has worked with leading companies such as Cargill, Renault, and Worldline, contributing to data science, industrial engineering, and sustainable technology projects. His expertise in robotics, industrial engineering, and leadership has enabled him to lead collaborative initiatives across teams, holding key roles such as chairman and section lead at IEEE.
As a youth global ambassador for the Internet Society 2025, he champions sustainable internet policies that promote digital inclusion, innovation, and environmental responsibility. Additionally, he is a public speaker and mentor with the Arqus European University Alliance, guiding students and young professionals to develop careers at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and data ethics.
Oussama is a passionate public speaker who shares insights on sustainability in data governance, ethical AI, and digital inclusion. He is available for keynotes, panels, and discussions that explore the role of technology and responsible data management in shaping a more sustainable and equitable future.
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From AI Users to AI Creators: Empowering Africa’s Youth to Shape the Digital Future
Artificial Intelligence is becoming a fundamental layer of the Internet, shaping digital services, public infrastructure, and the ways people access, create, and exchange information. For Africa, this transformation presents a major opportunity, but many young people still face barriers that prevent them from moving from AI users to AI creators. These barriers include limited access to practical skills, affordable and meaningful connectivity, cloud and computing resources, locally relevant datasets, financing, employment pathways, research networks, and opportunities to participate in policymaking and technical standards processes.
This interactive workshop will examine how African youth can take meaningful roles in the development, governance, and responsible use of AI. For this session, an “AI creator” is not limited to a software developer. The term also includes researchers, entrepreneurs, data practitioners, artists, content creators, open-source contributors, language-technology innovators, policy contributors, technical standards participants, and community leaders who adapt AI to address local needs.
Particular attention will be given to young women, rural youth, and young people from underserved communities who face additional structural barriers to accessing AI education, infrastructure, funding, professional networks, and decision-making spaces. The discussion will explore how governments, universities, companies, civil society, the technical community, and youth networks can create stronger pathways from training to employment, entrepreneurship, research, innovation, and policy participation.
The session will also address the security risks faced by young creators in an AI-enabled environment. Artists, entrepreneurs, content creators, and digital innovators may be exposed to AI-enabled social engineering, impersonation, account compromise, intellectual property misuse, fraudulent content, malicious false flags, and automated platform lockouts. These incidents can cause financial, professional, reputational, and personal harm, especially when creators lack cybersecurity support, transparent appeal procedures, or effective redress mechanisms. A practical case study will help participants examine how cybersecurity awareness, identity protection, platform accountability, digital trust, and accessible remedies can support safer participation in the AI economy.
The workshop will combine short expert interventions, facilitated working groups, participant prioritization, and stakeholder commitments. Both onsite and online participants will contribute recommendations on skills and education, infrastructure and computing, innovation and financing, governance and standards, cybersecurity, online safety, human rights, and youth participation.
Participants will identify practical actions that different stakeholder groups can implement within the next 12 months. The session will seek to produce five priority recommendations for a Youth AI Creators Action Framework, a stakeholder responsibility matrix, practical 12-month commitments, and a documented list of fellowships, standards bodies, policy processes, research networks, technical communities, innovation programmes, cybersecurity initiatives, and Internet Governance opportunities open to African youth.
The overall objective is to ensure that African youth are not only consulted about the future of AI, but are equipped and empowered to build, govern, secure, and shape it.
Security Risks in Africa's Digital Public Infrastructure
As African nations accelerate their investments in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), including digital ID systems, payments platforms, and data exchange mechanisms, the promise of greater inclusion, efficiency, and innovation is often paired with significant and under-addressed risks. At the heart of these risks lie pressing questions: Who controls the data? How is it managed? Who benefits? And crucially, who is protected?
This session explores the double-edged nature of DPI development in Africa, with a focus on the intersections between data governance, procurement practices, and cybersecurity. While DPI is increasingly positioned as the backbone of Africa’s digital transformation, supporting everything from cash transfers to cross-border trade, the foundational systems that underpin it are frequently procured or operated through fragmented, underregulated, or externally controlled arrangements.
We will examine the implications of:
Weak or incomplete legal and regulatory frameworks, which often lag behind the pace of technological change.
Limited enforcement capacity, especially in ensuring compliance with data protection and cybersecurity protocols.
External dependencies, including over-reliance on foreign vendors for software, hosting, and critical infrastructure, which raises concerns about data sovereignty and long-term sustainability.
Procurement-stage blind spots, where key decisions about infrastructure design, access rights, and data governance are made without sufficient public oversight or transparency.
Drawing from real-world examples—including MOSIP-based ID systems, national data exchanges like Uganda’s UGHub, and fintech ecosystems such as Ghana’s mobile money infrastructure—this session will analyze how DPI systems can either reinforce or undermine public trust. We will explore case studies where vendor lock-in, lack of secure-by-design standards, and opaque data-sharing practices have created vulnerabilities to surveillance, exclusion, and cyberattacks.
At the same time, the session highlights promising opportunities to build a resilient, people-centered DPI. This includes promoting:
Secure-by-design procurement guidelines that embed cybersecurity and data protection at the outset.
Interoperability standards that allow for flexibility and regional integration while protecting privacy.
Capacity-building initiatives within governments to reduce reliance on external actors and improve digital governance.
Policy harmonization efforts, such as the AU’s Data Policy Framework and the Malabo Convention, to strengthening cross-border data flows and shared cybersecurity protocols.
Ultimately, this session invites participants to reframe DPI not simply as a technical or developmental tool, but as a governance challenge that demands public accountability, transparency, and democratic oversight. By confronting the risks and making data security a pillar, not an afterthought, of digital public infrastructure, African nations can chart a path toward trustworthy, inclusive digital futures.
Oussama Elmerrahi
Data Manager • Internet Champion • LLM Trainer • Sustainability Expert
Paris, France
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