Africa's AI conversation is moving rapidly from adoption toward increasingly capable systems that can generate content, make recommendations, use tools, access data and execute tasks. Yet the capacity required to understand, evaluate and govern these systems is not developing at the same pace.

This session asks a fundamental question: can African institutions effectively govern AI systems they cannot meaningfully evaluate?

The session presents AI governance as a systems-capacity challenge rather than solely a question of passing AI-specific legislation. It examines five connected capabilities that governments, businesses and institutions need: institutional and regulatory capacity; technical AI evaluation; data, infrastructure and compute governance; procurement and vendor oversight; and accountability, monitoring and human oversight.

It will also examine interoperability across public, private and informal-sector environments. AI increasingly depends on connected systems including digital public infrastructure, cloud services, data ecosystems, enterprise platforms and cross-border technology providers. Effective governance therefore requires coordination across institutions and sectors rather than isolated regulation.

Drawing on practical experience across law, AI implementation, legal technology and organisational operations, the session will translate these issues into a practical framework that can be adapted across African contexts.

Attendees will leave with three concrete priorities: identifying their institution's AI governance capability gaps, establishing minimum controls for evaluating and deploying AI systems, and building cross-sector and regional mechanisms for shared expertise, standards and accountability.