Maada Bio Presses Africa’s Case as Global AI Powers Draft the Rules
Ben Bassey President Julius Maada Bio used Sierra Leone’s sole seat at a France-convened summit of eight world leaders to demand that Africa help write global AI safety rules rather than simply inherit them.
Speaking by video on Monday, November 9, 2026, Bio told the high-level meeting on frontier AI model security that developing countries should not be left to adopt standards set elsewhere, and called for common evaluation benchmarks, clearer developer accountability, and international mechanisms for reporting serious AI incidents.
Sierra Leone was the only African country represented at the leaders’ level, alongside Bahrain, Canada, Finland, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom . The meeting, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, also drew executives from OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic and Mistral AI, and produced the Paris Call for AI Safety and Security—a declaration committing signatories to independent model evaluations, incident reporting and shutdown mechanisms .
Sierra Leone welcomed the declaration but was not among the six states that formally signed it, a distinction that underscores the gap between participation and binding commitment.
Bio framed the demand for inclusion as a question of sovereignty, not charity. “No country can adequately address these challenges on its own,” he said. “Sovereignty does not mean doing everything alone. It means choosing the terms on which we work together”.
He also pressed for investment in scientific expertise and evaluation tools so that developing nations can independently assess AI systems deployed within their borders—capacity that currently sits almost entirely with the companies building the models.
The intervention came as Sierra Leone develops its first National AI Strategy with World Bank support, drawing on a completed National AI Readiness Assessment . The government is exploring applications in agriculture, healthcare, education and public services, while pursuing regional digital infrastructure through ECOWAS, including a proposed Regional Data Embassy Framework .
The Paris Call drew immediate criticism from safety advocates who noted it sets no common risk thresholds, no guaranteed access for independent evaluators, and no authority for governments to suspend model deployment when risks are deemed unacceptable. Those are precisely the binding mechanisms that would give Bio’s call for meaningful African participation real weight.
For now, Sierra Leone has secured a voice in the conversation. Whether that voice translates into enforceable rules—or remains a seat at a table where others set the terms—is the question the next round of AI governance talks will answer.