Digital divide could become new colonialism — Russia warns

At a session of the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum in Moscow, Andrey Akulchev warned that unregulated artificial intelligence could deepen inequality and turn Africa into a source of raw materials and data for the AI economy. He said a Russia-Africa declaration on AI supports each country’s right to set its own policies and backs multilingual solutions, including Swahili, Yoruba, Hausa, Amharic and Zulu. Maxim Kolesnikov said Russia has supported 13 AI research centres employing more than 2,000 scientists since 2021 and invited African researchers to collaborate with them.