AI and the Global South: Now or Never

To introduce the final Newsroom issue before the summer break, our co-founder Hamza Hraoui penned a powerful editorial. Building on the conversation with Martin Tisné, he makes a clear case: the Global South must take its AI future into its own hands. It’s now or never.

“The hardest thing for a revolutionary,” Trotsky once said, “is figuring out what to do the day after victory.”

Artificial intelligence isn’t a promise anymore. It’s a revolution. Massive, unstoppable, global.

A handful of tech giants now write the code that governs our lives. GAFAM control what we know, how we buy, and even how we connect with each other. The revolution is here. And it won’t wait for permission.

Leaders everywhere, North and South, face a brutal reality: adapt or be swept aside. Governments, those slow-moving supertankers, are already shaking under the tremors of ChatGPT. Tomorrow will be even harsher. AI’s breakthroughs are breathtaking, but they’re also deepening a dangerous divide: techno-political hyperpowers on one side, and everyone else falling behind.

The Global South doesn’t have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines. Tech can help leapfrog decades of development, but the clock is ticking. Rapid population growth risks turning the long-promised “demographic dividend” into a social time bomb.

AI is forcing us to pop the hood on the future. Armageddon or renewal? As Peter Thiel bluntly told Le Grand Continent, AI could just as easily “end the world… only a little faster.”

This summer, we’re turning to Martin Tisné, co-founder of Current AI, to tackle a critical question: what role can the Global South, and Africa in particular play in this silent AI war?

History is accelerating. The 2020s will be decisive. We can’t afford to look away.

Bel été.

H