- Africa must teach children to use AI critically and responsibly rather than banning it or ignoring its presence in classrooms.
- Data showsKenya’s generative AI diffusion is at 8.1 per cent, trailing South Africa, Egypt, Senegal and Tunisia,
- Kenya should move beyond its National AI Strategy 2025-2030 policy framework toward actual implementation, including teacher training, infrastructure and child data privacy safeguards.
A student struggling with an algebra problem no longer has to wait until the next lesson to ask for help. A learner trying to understand photosynthesis can type a question into an AI chatbot and receive an explanation in seconds. Another can ask the same tool to suggest an essay structure, correct grammar or generate revision questions. For many Kenyan children, artificial intelligence is already part of the learning environment, whether schools have formally embraced it or not.
Yet in many classrooms and homes, the first response to AI has been fear. Parents worry that children will stop thinking. Teachers worry about plagiarism, while schools worry about academic integrity. These concerns are legitimate, but banning AI will not make it disappear. The more important question is whether African children will learn how to use it properly. Africa needs to move from teaching children to stay away from AI to teaching them how to think with it, question it and use it responsibly.
Uneven Adoption Raises the Stakes
The urgency is reflected in the continent’s uneven adoption of the technology. Microsoft data shows that Kenya’s generative AI diffusion stood at 8.1 per cent in the second half of 2025, compared with 21.1 per cent in South Africa, 13.4 per cent in Egypt, 12.9 per cent in Senegal and 12.7 per cent in Tunisia. These figures are not merely about how many people use ChatGPT or similar applications; they offer a glimpse into how different economies are absorbing technologies that are changing workplaces, businesses and public services. If today’s children leave school without knowing how AI works, how to question its answers or how to use it ethically, the consequences will eventually be felt in the labour market.
The danger, however, is not AI itself. It is uncritical use. A child who asks an AI system to explain why a mathematical formula works is using technology to deepen understanding. A student who asks it to generate practice questions and then answers them independently may actually strengthen learning. But a learner who copies an AI-generated essay, submits it as their own and never understands what is written has defeated the purpose of education. That distinction should become part of classroom teaching. For generations, schools have taught children how to use books, libraries, calculators and the internet without allowing these tools to do all the thinking for them. AI should be treated in much the same way.
UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Students identifies 12 competencies covering human-centred thinking, ethics, technical understanding and AI system design. The framework encourages learners to move from understanding AI to applying it and eventually creating AI systems. This is important because AI literacy is not simply knowing where to find a chatbot. Children need to understand that AI can produce convincing but inaccurate answers. They need to learn how bias enters datasets, why privacy matters, how to verify information and when human judgement should take precedence over a machine-generated response.
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The education sector itself is still catching up. A UNESCO survey covering more than 450 schools and universities found in 2023 that fewer than 10 per cent had formal guidance or institutional policies on generative AI. Technology has therefore entered classrooms faster than rules, teacher training and teaching practices have developed around it.
Kenya’s Policy Groundwork Faces an Implementation Gap
Kenya has begun laying some groundwork. The National AI Strategy 2025 to 2030 identifies education and skills development as important to the country’s AI ambitions, proposing strengthened teacher training and the introduction of AI and emerging technologies into education. However, the challenge is implementation. There is little value in putting AI into policy documents if a teacher in a rural school has no reliable internet, adequate devices or training on how to integrate the technology into a lesson. AI education must not become another avenue for widening the gap between well-equipped schools and those already struggling with basic infrastructure.
There is also the question of privacy. Children may unknowingly enter their names, school details, photographs or family information into AI systems. Kenya’s Data Protection Act provides safeguards around the processing of children’s personal data and requires appropriate consent.
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Parents, too, have a role. Telling children simply that “AI is cheating” may push its use underground. A better conversation would ask questions like: what did you use it for? What did it tell you? How did you establish that the answer was correct?
Africa has a particular stake in getting this right. Its population is young, and millions of children entering schools today will join a labour market where AI is likely to be far more common than it is now. The answer cannot be to prepare them for a world that no longer exists. Our children should not only become users of AI; they should eventually become the people designing, questioning, regulating and improving it, and that starts in the classroom. Africa does not need children who learn around AI but children who learn with it, while retaining the one thing no machine should replace: the ability to think for themselves.
By Paul Brian Onyango
Paul is a Diplomat, Executive Head of Training under the General Assembly at Kenya Model United Nations (KMUN), and Programming Officer at Africa for SDGs
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