AI governance frameworks fail Global South: systemic inequities in digital regulation and power asymmetries exposed
Original framing: “When the framework doesn't fit: AI governance for the rest of the world” — bing news
The current AI governance crisis mirrors 19th-century colonial census projects, where enumerators extracted data to justify resource extraction and racial hierarchies. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s dismantled Southern regulatory capacity, leaving nations dependent on Northern tech giants for 'solutions.' The 'Global South' label itself is a Cold War construct that obscures pre-colonial governance systems (e.g., the Swahili city-states' trade networks with built-in dispute resolution).
The crisis of AI governance is not a technical failure but a colonial continuity, where Western frameworks—designed for extractive capitalism—are repackaged as 'universal' solutions.
Indigenous epistemologies, Southern feminist critiques, and historical reparations offer a radical alternative: governance as communal healing, not corporate control. Yet the trickster's laughter reveals the absurdity of 'adapting' frameworks that were never meant to serve the Global South. The path forward requires dismantling the power structures that produce these frameworks, from IMF structural adjustment to Silicon Valley's 'ethics theater.' Actors like the African Union, Southern feminist collectives, and indigenous data sovereignty movements must lead, while Northern allies cede power—not 'include' Southern voices, but dissolve the hierarchies that silence them. The EU's AI Act, the World Bank's 'AI for Development' programs, and even 'ethical AI' startups are all part of the problem if they refuse to confront their colonial roots.