Africa's conversation about artificial intelligence is too often framed as a race to catch up with the rest of the world. Yet the more pressing question is not how quickly AI is adopted, but whose intelligence is being built, who controls it and who ultimately benefits from it.
The recent announcement of a partnership between Ghana's Ministry of Education and Google to develop AI solutions for local languages brings this tension into sharp focus. On the surface, the agreement appears to signal progress towards inclusion and technological advancement. Beneath it, however, lies a familiar and troubling pattern: the preference for global brand partnerships over existing local innovation.
What made the episode particularly instructive was the initial decision to bypass Khaya AI, a homegrown solution already working on African language technologies. This was not a failure of local capacity, but a failure of institutional reflex, one that continues to shape policy decisions across emerging economies. It is also not uniquely Ghanaian. Across the continent, similar choices are being made, with long-term implications for innovation ecosystems, data ownership and digital sovereignty.
