DESCRIPTION
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of how people learn, work, create, communicate and make decisions. Yet conversations about AI inclusion often focus on access: devices, connectivity, platforms and digital skills.
But access does not necessarily create agency.
A young person may have access to powerful AI tools while lacking the ability to question an AI-generated answer, recognise bias, protect personal data, verify information or decide when AI should and should not be trusted.
This fireside chat explores the emerging AI Agency Gap: the gap between having access to artificial intelligence and having the knowledge, critical capacity, rights and confidence to exercise meaningful agency when using it.
Bringing together perspectives from technology, digital rights, education, research and youth development, the conversation will examine how AI can expand opportunity while also creating new forms of dependency, inequality and exclusion.
The central question is: If AI can increasingly write for us, search for us, recommend for us and influence decisions for us, what must humans still learn to do for themselves? The session will move from AI access to AI literacy, from AI literacy to agency, and from agency to rights and accountability while asking what it means for Africans not merely to consume AI, but to participate in shaping the digital future.