African Nations Must Claim Seat at AI Regulation Table, SAP Executive Urges

Sunil Geness, SAP’s Director of Global Government Affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility for Africa, is pushing African nations to enter AI governance negotiations with a structured economic agenda rather than a defensive posture. His call comes as the newly launched AI for Good Global Commission prepares to convene during the International Telecommunication Union’s AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, scheduled for July 7 to 10.

The commission represents a coordinated effort by governments, businesses and international organizations to identify mechanisms for expanding AI access while building institutional trust and measurable social and economic returns. Its formation signals a shift toward structured multilateral engagement on artificial intelligence policy. The inaugural meeting falls within Digital Week, running July 6 to 10, which also includes the first U.N.-mandated Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the WSIS Forum 2026.

Geness outlined five economic and operational priorities for African participation: compute infrastructure access, skills development investment, trusted data governance systems, open technical standards and local-language innovation capacity. He also identified accountable public procurement processes and regulatory frameworks that enable entrepreneurial activity without compromising consumer protection as essential components of any credible African strategy.

The core challenge, as Geness framed it, lies in converting the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy from a policy document into executable national implementation plans, capital deployment pipelines and coordinated regional mechanisms. He characterized this effort as “technology diplomacy,” in which 54 African nations align their positions on shared governance principles rather than fragmenting their negotiating power across separate bilateral engagements.

Africa’s institutional position within the commission has been reinforced by the appointment of Rwandan President Paul Kagame as co-chair, sharing leadership with Salesforce Chair and CEO Marc Benioff. That dual structure reflects a deliberate attempt to balance regional representation with corporate sector participation in shaping AI governance frameworks.

The ITU has anchored the commission’s mandate around a specific market and access gap. Approximately 2.2 billion people globally remain without internet connectivity, roughly one quarter of the world’s population, creating a structural exclusion from AI-driven economic opportunities. The commission is tasked with narrowing this digital divide and ensuring that AI deployment reduces rather than amplifies existing economic inequalities.

Benioff framed AI’s economic viability as dependent on sustained public confidence in the technology and its governance. He characterized trust as foundational infrastructure for capturing AI’s economic potential, arguing that regulatory legitimacy and transparent institutional oversight directly affect market adoption and investment returns.

Meanwhile, ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, serving as vice chair of the commission, emphasized that no single organization possesses sufficient expertise or authority to manage AI governance unilaterally. She called for cross-sector collaboration as a structural requirement, arguing that effective AI policy demands combined knowledge from government, business and civil society institutions operating in coordinated fashion.

The timing reflects broader momentum toward formalized AI governance structures at the international level. The commission’s work will run alongside parallel U.N. processes and regional forums, creating multiple venues for negotiating policy frameworks. For African nations, the commission’s launch presents both an opportunity to shape governance standards before they crystallize elsewhere and a requirement to develop coherent negotiating positions across a diverse set of national economies and regulatory environments. Whether the African Union’s continental strategy can be translated into that kind of coordinated capital and policy deployment, before other blocs set the terms, remains the open question.