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Kenya targets health, education sectors with new AI strategy
Publication of the strategy comes as Kenya races to plug loopholes amid AI’s fast-growing popularity, with fears recently growing in the industry due to the country’s lack of a legal framework.
Kenyan has singled out healthcare, education and agriculture as top priority sectors in its new artificial intelligence (AI) deployment strategy.
Other sectors mapped out for early focus include public service delivery, security, creative, sustainability as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Within the healthcare sector, the State says two critical use cases are currently under consideration, including development of a maternal health chatbot in local dialects to provide accurate pregnancy and childbirth data, in addition to an expanded disease advisory system that will build on existing platforms.
The strategy says in education, priority will go to intelligent tutoring systems and multilingual teacher training modules to improve access and quality of instruction, while emerging use cases in agriculture include translating existing data into farmer-friendly audio formats in local languages and developing AI-powered fertiliser recommendation systems.
“Public-sector use cases include multilingual chatbots and virtual assistants to improve service delivery, while the creative sector could benefit from an AI-powered national digital creative platform to enhance market access and support local content creators,” newly published Kenya AI strategy 2025-2030 by ICT Ministry reads.
Kenya has identified three pillars to boost AI uptake, including modernisation of the national digital infrastructure for AI access and development, establishment of a data ecosystem for AI and innovation, as well as incentivising the development of localised AI models and solutions.
Publication of the strategy comes as Kenya races to plug loopholes amid AI’s fast-growing popularity, with fears recently growing in the industry due to the country’s lack of a legal framework.
With the private sector leading in adoption of the new technology in Kenya, experts have previously warned that transparency of AI solutions is critical to driving its adoption across the country’s socio-economic segments.
Among the challenges singled out through the key informant interviews (KIIs) conducted by the strategy drafters include lack of quality and digitised data and entrenched public mistrust in AI systems which pose significant barriers to the widespread adoption of the technology.
The government, however, through the strategy paper, observes that Kenya’s existing legal frameworks will provide direction on initial aspects of AI development and use.
“Kenya has robust existing legal frameworks, including the Data Protection Act and the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, which provide direction on aspects of AI development and use. These regulatory frameworks enable initial trust in AI systems, and some redress mechanisms for misuse and AI harms,” the AI strategy said.
It also takes note of the country’s young and digital-ready workforce, saying its basic training provides a base for developing advanced AI capabilities and fostering innovation.
“This workforce has basic training and high digital literacy, which provide a base for developing advanced AI capabilities and fostering innovation as AI workforce demand increases both domestically and internationally,” it observes.
“Some of these workers are already supporting international companies such as Sama in the development of AI through outsourced data processing and labelling.”
