Dalia Othman
In recent years we have witnessed a race across the SWANA region with countries rushing to develop national AI strategies and investing in AI technologies. Just this past year saw 100 Billion USD investment contracts towards AI infrastructure coming from large US Tech companies. Gulf Countries are positioning themselves as regional AI hubs.
The current state driven model across the region is framed as to foster innovation, yet ensures that the national AI strategies are aligned with local economic and security priorities.
Ultimately, investing in these technologies in a variety of sectors is paving the way to reshape labor markets and societies. Its use of facial recognition, prediction policing and smart-city infrastructure carries significant risks of misuse —particularly for surveillance, censorship, and social control and deepens existing inequalities.
Research and literature on this topic is still emerging in the region and we have no comprehensive analysis of national AI strategies that would allow us to assess their intersection with human rights principles. To answer this, we are launching a new research project, one that will allow us to address a critical gap and help identify the extent to which national AI strategies comply with human rights principles and responsible or ethical AI frameworks.
Through this research we will attempt to answer how national AI strategies across 8 different countries across the region align with human-rights–based principles, and what policy gaps emerge from their intersections. Based on that we will assess what regionally coherent, rights-based standards and governance principles are necessary to guide the accountable, inclusive, and sustainable adoption of AI across SWANA countries.
Mapping, analyzing and revealing gaps in the region’s AI Frameworks
We are kicking things off with the mapping of AI strategies and governance frameworks in all of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Once we have highlighted these elements, the next step is understanding and analyzing. We’ll move on to hold conversations with academic experts, as well as digital rights Civil Society Organizations that have participated in consultations of national AI strategies. All this will enable us to conduct a comprehensive analysis on how these strategies and frameworks intersect with existing legal frameworks: privacy and data protection laws, labor laws, gender protection laws, and human-rights-based principles.
We believe this analysis will allow us to explore alignments (or misalignments!) between existing frameworks and these newly developed AI strategies. This will allow us to better understand how the AI ecosystem is being shaped in the region and where they are situated in the broader legislative environments.
The research aims to inform researchers, Civil Society Organizations that work within different sectors such as labor rights, gender rights and digital rights and International NGOs. We also aim to provide sources of solid information on the current gaps in national AI strategies and bring it back to the region. We will not stay in pointing at gaps only, our analysis will also aim to suggest potential remedies to ensure the adoption of accountable, inclusive, and sustainable AI in the region.
Working together to reimagine and shape our digital realities
As we build the base for new findings, we also aim to bring together CSOs, academics, Activists and technologists together to develop a contextualized rights-based AI Framework. We’re uncovering and creating knowledge, yes, but with this we’re also creating spaces to reimagine and co-create/ shape digital realities that respond to us; that work for us, and with us.
This AI Framework forms the foundation for consultations with governing bodies, CSOs, and technologists to champion its implementation. It represents a fundamental shift: moving away from imposed projections and toward the lived realities of our communities. Our goal is to develop guidelines that ensure AI adoption in the SWANA region is truly accountable, inclusive, and sustainable, reflecting the diverse realities currently absent from policy, legal frameworks, and technological development. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a spark: a new wave of initiatives and technologies that emerge from, without dominating, the communities they serve.