Mozambique and UNESCO craft national AI strategy for ethical adoption

Mozambique’s move to work with UNESCO on a national AI strategy shows how quickly AI governance is globalizing beyond the usual G‑7 and China‑centric focus. The initiative is explicitly framed around embedding international ethics and human‑rights standards into national policy, with the aim of building trust in digital solutions and avoiding a purely extractive deployment of imported technologies. ([iafrica.com](https://iafrica.com/mozambique-develops-national-ai-strategy-with-unesco-support/?utm_source=openai))

In practical terms, a strategy like this will focus far more on infrastructure, capacity building and sectoral use cases (finance, agriculture, public services) than on frontier model development. But its existence matters for the AGI race because it shapes how and where advanced models can be used, and how benefits and risks are distributed. If more African states adopt similar frameworks, large labs will have to navigate a patchwork of governance regimes that care about local data sovereignty, bias and inclusion.

Meaningful engagement from smaller economies also pushes global bodies like UNESCO and the OECD to treat the Global South as co‑authors of AI norms, not just recipients. That could influence everything from dataset composition to safety benchmarks, even if Mozambique itself is not training next‑generation AGI models.