Digital divide could become new colonialism — Russia warns

Russia has warned that unregulated development of Artificial Intelligence, AI, risks deepening global inequality and creating a new form of colonialism, with Africa at risk of becoming a raw-material appendage of the AI economy.

The warning was issued by Andrey Akulchev, Acting Director of Department of International Information Security of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the session “AI as a Factor in Development of Russia and Africa: Science and Personnel” held as part of business programme of third Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum in Moscow.

“If development of artificial intelligence is left unregulated, digital divide could become a new global watershed and fertile ground for modern forms of colonialism,” Akulchev said.

According to him, Russia advocates equal access to technology and takes the interests of countries of Global South into account.

“Africa must not become either a raw-material appendage of the new AI-based economy or a free data warehouse for those who train their models on it,” he stated.

Akulchev disclosed that within framework of Russia-Africa summit, a separate declaration on AI has been agreed, which enshrines right of each country to independently determine its policy in this area and supports multilingual solutions, including Swahili, Yoruba, Hausa, Amharic and Zulu.

Also speaking at same session, First Deputy Minister of Economic Development of Russian Federation, Maxim Kolesnikov, said Russia has been supporting 13 research centres in the field of artificial intelligence, where more than 2,000 scientists work since 2021. He said the centres are open to cooperation with African colleagues.

“We also invite our African colleagues to cooperate on basis of our laboratories. Together with foreign scientists from our centres, as well as foreign partner centres from 36 countries, we held International AI Foresight last year,” Kolesnikov said.

He noted that one of the preparatory sessions of the foresight was held in Morocco with participation of representatives of African countries.

Both interventions formed part of broader push by Moscow to position AI cooperation as pillar of Russia-Africa partnership, anchored on technological sovereignty, local capacity building and respect for national regulatory autonomy, rather than one-way technology transfer.