By
Tuhu Nugraha
Africa-Press – Lesotho. Why the Margins Matter
Global conversations about AI governance have largely been dominated by frameworks and philosophies forged in the Global North—where regulatory priorities are shaped by advanced infrastructure, corporate dominance, and geopolitical leverage. But for the Global South, the stakes are different. Here, the risks are more than algorithmic bias; they are about digital exclusion, technological dependency, and the erasure of local context.
Yet including perspectives from the Global South is not merely a matter of equity—it is a strategic imperative for the Global North as well. Without Southern insight, governance frameworks risk becoming unsustainable, incompatible with diverse adoption realities, and ultimately fragile. Technologies that ignore local needs often face delayed adoption, higher resistance, or unintended harms. Conversely, when AI systems are shaped with Southern contexts in mind, they become more adaptable, resilient, and scalable.
It is time to ask: what happens when governance is shaped not just by those who build the technology, but also by those who must live with its consequences—and what does the Global North gain by truly listening?
Beyond Adoption: Toward Ethical Adaptation
In many developing countries, AI is still viewed through a binary lens: adopt or fall behind. Yet this framing misses a crucial dimension—adaptation.
Adaptation demands more than technical skills; it requires cultural fluency, ethical grounding, and social imagination. It means embedding technologies within the values, norms, and needs of a community—rather than imposing external frameworks that may not fit.
This is not only vital for the Global South, but also critical for the Global North. Ethical adaptation enables smoother cross-cultural adoption, reduces unintended harm, and ensures that technologies are scalable without erasing diversity. It also helps mitigate social risks often overlooked in top-down deployments—such as public distrust, misinformation backlash, and resistance to perceived techno-imperialism. When social risks materialize, they do not stay confined within borders; they affect global supply chains, market readiness, and brand legitimacy.
By investing in ethical adaptation, Global North developers and corporations can secure more stable, socially accepted, and faster routes to adoption. It increases the sustainability of innovation by making systems responsive to varied realities. Furthermore, it creates shared responsibility—transforming governance from a top-down exercise into a collaborative endeavor, where both sides co-own the outcome and consequences.
The Global South must not be reduced to a market or a testing ground—it must be seen as a source of wisdom, offering alternative logics of care, community, and contextual intelligence that could enrich global governance debates.
The Role of Reflective Networks: A Case from Indonesia
To bridge this gap, reflective networks have emerged—quietly but powerfully. One such example is IADERN (Indonesia Applied Digital Economy & Regulatory Network), an initiative that arose from the realization that conventional governance tools—often designed with assumptions from the Global North—were failing to address the complex, lived realities of the Global South.
This is crucial because most discussions around AI and emerging technologies remain siloed: dominated by technical jargon, policy circles isolated from community realities, or frameworks that are disconnected from local infrastructure, cultural values, and institutional readiness. The result is a vacuum where governance is either too abstract to apply or too rigid to adapt.
Instead of replicating global models, IADERN focuses on what it calls “scaling depth”: facilitating trust across academic, governmental, civil, and creative sectors. It serves not just as a think tank, but as a translation zone—where AI ethics, blockchain regulation, and digital public policy are shaped with nuance and humility, grounded in local context, and reinterpreted for global relevance.
Their model is not to lead from the front, but to listen from the edges—and co-create frameworks that work because they are locally rooted.
Global Recognition, Local Resonance
This grounded approach has sparked international interest:
IADERN has contributed to whitepapers with institutions in Australia and China
Co-authored research with academic collaborators from India
Been invited to speak in Dubai on smart mobility and blockchain
And most notably, contributed to the Brown Journal of World Affairs, read by global policymakers
Yet its most enduring impact may lie closer to home: media advocacy to demystify AI for local communities, collaboration with ministries to develop risk-aware policies, and translation of complex regulations into public narratives. IADERN has also been actively involved in workshops, advisory sessions, and capacity-building with industry stakeholders—providing deep, practice-based insights into the realities of AI adoption and digital transformation across sectors. This includes co-developing AI risk management and cybersecurity recommendations with BSSN (Indonesia’s National Cyber and Crypto Agency), as well as creating practical AI literacy guides for civil servants in ministries and government institutions, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Informatics (Kemkominfo/Kemkomdigi). This proximity to ground-level shifts enables IADERN to act as both observer and co-designer of context-sensitive governance.
These acts do not generate headlines—but they build resilience.
Why Global Frameworks Need Southern Interlocutors
The world does not need more templates exported from the top. It needs conversational bridges—actors who can shuttle between high-level policy and ground-level insight. The Global South, when speaking from its own reality, becomes more than a recipient. It becomes a recalibrator of the global order.
In this recalibration, the role of interdisciplinary actors—those who combine research, advocacy, storytelling, and community insight—is central. They are not merely participants in policy—they are designers of it.
This is precisely why the future of emerging technologies—especially AI—must involve ethical adaptation from the ground up. When local contexts shape AI governance, the technology becomes not only more humane, but more sustainable and secure. It enhances humanity rather than replacing it. As concerns rise globally about AI’s unchecked development potentially destabilizing economies or social cohesion, models from the Global South that emphasize inclusion, trust, and reflection can help mitigate those risks before they explode into global backlash.
Toward a Pluralist Future
We cannot build trustworthy AI if we ignore trust-building traditions outside the West. We cannot ensure inclusive governance if we exclude the very contexts that define inclusion.
The future of AI governance will not be decided solely in Brussels or Silicon Valley. It must also be written in Jakarta, Nairobi, and Medellín.
This imperative becomes even more urgent amid the escalating race for AI dominance between China and the United States—a contest that, while technologically sophisticated, often sidelines governance safeguards and risk management protocols. In the rush to lead, ethical reflection is often the first casualty.
And so the path forward must begin not with dominance, but with dialogue. Not with templates, but with trust.
moderndiplomacy
For More News And Analysis About Lesotho Follow Africa-Press
