ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE AFRICAN ONTOGENESIS: NAVIGATING THE DIALECTIC OF TRANSFORMATION, CHALLENGES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

This paper investigates the complex interplay between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and African ontogenesis, understood as the philosophical, cultural, and socio-historical process of becoming in the African world. While AI is often celebrated globally for its transformative potential in healthcare, education, governance, and economic development, its introduction into Africa raises deeper questions about identity, culture, and being. Through the philosophical complementary methods of dialectics and hermeneutics, this study critically examines both the opportunities and the challenges AI presents to Africa's ontogenetic journey. It interrogates the risks of digital colonialism, cultural erasure, and epistemic dependency, while also underscoring the possibilities of technological empowerment, knowledge democratization, and cultural preservation. Therefore, engaging African philosophical frameworks such as Igwebuike, Ubuntu and decolonial thought, the study highlights pathways for grounding AI within African values and realities. Its significance lies in showing that Africa must not be a passive consumer of external technologies but an active agent shaping AI in ways that affirm its identity, resilience, and ontological becoming. The study thus contributes to broader debates on technology, decoloniality, and the future of human flourishing in Africa and beyond.

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