eLearning Africa 2026: Recalibrating the AI Revolution on Africa’s Terms

There are conferences you attend, and then there are conferences that enhance the direction of your life.

eLearning Africa is the second kind. For me, personally.

It was at eLearning Africa that I met someone who worked for the GSMA, as at that time I was building, figuring things out and trying to find my footing in the EdTech space. That connection led to a recommendation. That recommendation led to a role that fundamentally transformed my career.

So when I say I’m excited about this conference, I mean it in the way that only a place that shaped you can matter, but it is not just nostalgia that brings me back,It is the energy. There is nothing quite like being in a room full of people who are serious about digital learning, about equity in education, about what technology can actually do for communities that have historically been handed other people’s solutions. The eLearning Africa team genuinely cares that you leave with more than you came with, both in knowledge and in connection. 

This year, I am returning not just as an attendee but as a workshop leader on behalf of my new-ish NGO, datocracy AI. I will be co-leading a half-day workshop on a question I constantly get: what does it actually mean to govern AI, rather than merely use it?

Most of the AI conversations I sit in are about access. Who has it and who doesn’t. That’s important but access without governance is just a faster way to become dependent on systems you don’t understand and can’t challenge. Within and across Africa, I keep watching organisations adopt AI tools without the frameworks to interrogate them and without asking whose knowledge, whose biases, and whose assumptions are embedded in them.

The workshop moves beyond upskilling. Participants will work through real scenarios; reviewing tools for extractive patterns, detecting bias, designing context-sensitive deployments. And every participant will leave with a one-page institutional data roadmap: a practical document they can actually use when they get home.

This session is designed for programme directors, policy officers, M&E leads, the people inside institutions who are making decisions about AI right now, often without enough support to make those decisions well. The goal is not to make them afraid of technology. The goal is to give them the frameworks to engage with it on their own terms.

If you’re attending eLearning Africa this year, I’ll be at Room: Adinkra from 9:00 to 12:30 on Wednesday 3 June. If you’ve never been to the conference at all, I’d genuinely encourage you to consider it. It changed my career once and it still continues to create impact. I’m so looking forward to reuniting with my brother Habib Houndekindo to deliver this. Join us!