BUJUMBURA, August 19 (BC) – At the Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2025), held in Lillestrom, Norway, from June 23 to 27, 2025, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Communication, Technology, and Innovation, Salimah Bah, delivered a strong message on the urgent need to strengthen cyber-security and better integrate artificial intelligence into African realities.
Answering questions from a Burundian journalist, she stated that cyber-security must be at the heart of any digital strategy. According to her, as soon as a country begins its digital transition, it becomes vulnerable. « It’s like attracting bees to honey, » she explained.
Salimah believes that African governments must go beyond reacting to attacks and adopt a proactive stance. She emphasizes the importance of getting prepared in advance, rather than waiting for a threat to emerge. For her, digital transformation must go hand in hand with an equivalent investment in system protection.
Furthermore, the minister emphasizes that skills development is an essential lever. From the police to judges, including lawyers and technical experts, every link in the judicial and security chain must be trained in cyberspace and digital crimes. Salimah considers this effort to be a national investment, just like the technological infrastructure itself.
AI can bring us closer or further exclude us
When asked about artificial intelligence, Salimah Bah does not hide her concern. AI, she says, is already among us. It is transforming our lives, often without our knowledge. « We talk about AI as if it were the future. But it is already here, and it is taking action, » she asserts. She also deplores the fact that algorithmic systems, particularly those used on social media, are often trained on data that does not reflect the realities of the African continent. Yet, these systems influence behaviors, discourse, and choices. According to her, this disconnect can have a profound social and cultural impact.
Salimah cites a recent discussion with her colleague, the Minister of Education, about tools like ChatGPT, OpenAI, and DeepSeek. She points out that it is pointless trying to ban them. « We can’t stop technology, » she says. In her view, the challenge is rather to learn how to live with it, as was the case in the past with calculators, which were first banned and then integrated into teaching methods.
She therefore advocates for an adapted education system that allows children to benefit from these tools, while maintaining fair and thoughtful assessments.
Africa Should Not Be Invisible in AI
According to Salimah Bah, artificial intelligence could become the main channel through which the world discovers Africa; hence her clear warning: « If African countries do not partake in the design of AI models, others will continue to tell their story for them. »
She recalls the time when the dominant image of the continent was limited to that of a starving African child covered in flies. « Because we didn’t have access to mainstream media, others defined our image, » she says. AI risks reproducing the same pattern. To avoid this, Salimah calls for the real inclusion of African data in learning models. This means being present, being represented, and actively contributing to the governance of these technologies.
She concludes by calling on governments, the media, civil society, the private sector, and international partners to stand together. « It’s a shared responsibility. If we don’t do it now, we risk having to correct the image we have been given of ourselves again in twenty years’ time. »
How about Burundi?
Salimah Bah’s calls also resonate in Burundi, where the digital transition is accelerating, but without always guaranteeing a secure and inclusive digital environment. While some public services, financial transactions, etc., increasingly rely on digital platforms, cyber-security risks are present, but insufficiently regulated.
A law taking its first steps
To date, Burundi does not yet have a specific cyber-security law, although some provisions are included in the law on cybercrime. The lack of a clear legal framework makes it difficult to prevent cyber-attacks and prosecute perpetrators of cybercrime.
When interviewed on this subject, Dr. David Kwizera, a digital law expert, acknowledged that « protection efforts exist, but they remain fragmented. » He advocates for a coherent national strategy, including training for judges and police officers, as Salimah Bah also emphasized.
In the judiciary, several judges admit that their skills remain limited, particularly due to a lack of training on digital crimes. A fundamental reform is therefore necessary if the country wants to effectively anticipate threats.
Artificial intelligence still absent from public debate
While artificial intelligence is already making its way into certain administrations and digital platforms worldwide, the debate remains very limited in Burundi. The national education system, in particular, has not yet integrated AI-related issues into its policies or programmes.
Yet young Burundians are already using, sometimes unknowingly, tools like ChatGPT, AI translators, or social media filters, which influence their daily lives.
African data missing in AI models
As Salimah Bah pointed out, the under-representation of African languages and realities in AI models could harm cultural identity and digital sovereignty. In Burundi, no structured government or university initiative yet aims to integrate Kirundi or local data into major linguistic models.
For Ferdinand Mberamihigo, a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Burundi, the risk is real: « If our languages are not represented in the technologies of tomorrow, our legacy will gradually be erased, » he insisted.
Kirundi faces the challenge of artificial intelligence: between isolated initiatives and a linguistic emergency
In a world increasingly governed by digital technologies, the absence of Kirundi (Burundian mother tongue) and Burundian cultural data in artificial intelligence (AI) models raises a crucial question: the digital survival of Burundian identity. To date, no structured government initiative seems willing to address this challenge. However, some voices, albeit in the minority, are sounding the alarm. Among them is that of Professor Ferdinand Mberamihigo.
In an interview with a check by Burundi News Agency (ABP), Prof. Mberamihigo emphasized: « There is no strong institutional initiative in Burundi to integrate Kirundi into artificial intelligence models. However, there are isolated efforts, led by teachers, language enthusiasts and even the diaspora. »
One of these projects, in which the professor is actively involved, aims to integrate Kirundi into Google Translate. Specifically, bilingual corpora (Kirundi-French) are being collected to populate linguistic database used in machine translation. This is a modest but strategic step, because, as he points out: « Today, the life of a language is no longer limited to books or the spoken word. It also plays out in software, digital platforms, and now in AI systems. »
Indeed, according to this researcher, not digitizing Kirundi means running the risk of relegating it to the status of a dead language in the decades to come. « If tomorrow, a Burundian student cannot interact with an AI in Kirundi, if they cannot ask questions about their own culture or grammar, then we will have lost a crucial battle: that of linguistic and cultural sovereignty. » The professor goes further: he advocates for the creation of a university department dedicated to computational linguistics in Burundi, operating as an interdisciplinary space where linguists, computer scientists, and African language specialists would come together to build the foundations for an inclusive digital future.
As for responsibilities, they are multiple. It is up to universities and researchers to develop research projects in this field. It is up to the public authorities to make it a national priority. It is up to journalists to raise awareness, and computer scientists to design appropriate tools. Finally, the public is asked to contribute to the collective effort by making bilingual texts available.
« We sometimes have difficulty obtaining documents. Yet these texts are crucial for informing AI. This work will not only benefit researchers. It will benefit everyone, especially pupils, students, and the diaspora, » insists Mberamihigo.
Dancing with the Digital Giants
« We must look at others’ perspectives and dance with others so that Kirundi is not marginalized, » says Professor Pascal Tuyubahe, Permanent Executive Secretary of the Rundi Academy.
Despite a growing presence on social media, Kirundi is still struggling to find its place in major artificial intelligence models. To that end, Prof. Tuyisabe sounds the alarm: « If Kirundi’s cultural data is not visible on the internet, our language risks digital invisibility. »
Yet, there is hope. On November 18, 2024, a joint government commission was established to integrate Kirundi into Google Translate. This initiative, led by two key ministries such as the ministry in charge of communication and that responsible for education, mobilizes Burundian linguists, computer scientists, translators, and researchers. The goal is to configure and enhance Burundian linguistic and cultural data so that it is readable, translatable, and usable by artificial intelligence.
Professor Tuyubahe insists: « Kirundi is not a purely oral language. It is richly documented. We have thousands of university dissertations, folktales, proverbs, and traditional stories. Now we just need to process them, structure them, and make them usable by AI. »
He also highlights a unique asset of Burundi: its national linguistic unity. In a country where the entire population speaks a single language, the development of technological tools in Kirundi becomes not only possible, but strategic for education, health, agriculture, and many other sectors.
« We need tools designed for Kirundi: translation, transcription, voice recognition. And for that, our researchers must collaborate internationally, » he insists.
« Artificial intelligence won’t think in Kirundi if the latter doesn’t exist on the internet, » emphasizes Rivardo Niyonizigiye, representative of the Akanyaburunga association and defender of Burundian culture.
For him, the observation is bitter: despite the richness of Burundian culture, Kirundi is almost absent from digital platforms. He points out that only three truly accessible websites regularly publish content in Kirundi, including Akanyaburunga’s blog and the Gitega musicology blog. As for social media, Kirundi is present, but in an impoverished version, sometimes mixed with French or English, reflecting a gradual loss of linguistic registers. « The language is crumbling, the vocabulary is dwindling. Today, it’s difficult to speak Kirundi for five minutes without switching to another language, especially when it comes to technological topics, » he reveals.
But this digital void is becoming particularly worrying in the age of artificial intelligence. Since AI trains exclusively on data available online, cultures absent from the digital sphere will simply not be taken into account. « A robot cannot think like a Burundian if it has never been fed Burundian data. »
For Niyonizigiye, this lack of representation paves the way for profound cultural disruption, especially in a country where more than 65% of the population is under 25. These young people, in search of answers, will increasingly turn to tools like ChatGPT. If these tools don’t speak their language or culture, an identity divide will set in.
He calls for total linguistic decolonization, lamenting that laws, official documents, and education systems are still dominated by French. He proposes the opposite approach: « Thinking must begin in Kirundi, and translation into French must follow, not the other way around. » Finally, he advocates for researchers, teachers, and legislators to bring Kirundi out of the academic drawers and make it a true pillar of Burundi’s digital society.
Dr. Fiacre Muhimpundu, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Burundi, highlights the current limitations of using artificial intelligence to promote Kirundi. According to him, « Kirundi is a language not yet coded in search engines. Therefore, claiming to use AI to promote Kirundi and data on Burundian culture, without having provided it with sufficient data on the Burundian language and culture, would be putting the cart before the horse. »
Artificial intelligence is already redrawing the contours of knowledge and culture on a global scale. If Africa and Burundi in particular, do not quickly take ownership of their cultural and linguistic data, they risk seeing their heritage relegated to the margins of tomorrow’s technologies. Preserving, digitizing, and promoting African languages and traditions should no longer be seen as a luxury, but as a strategic imperative. Investing in appropriate legal frameworks, local AI projects, and the training of young talent is key to ensuring that Africa does not remain a spectator but becomes a player in this digital revolution. The challenge is simple: it’s not only about protecting identity, but also ensuring that our voices are heard and integrated into the artificial intelligence that will shape the future of the world.