By Alhaji Abubakarr Bah, Information Attaché, Embassy of Sierra Leone, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Riyadh, 21st September 2026 — Sierra Leone’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Hon. Alpha Sesay has said that Sierra Leone has chosen not to rush into enacting an Artificial Intelligence law because effective legislation must be grounded in the national realities of Sierra Leone.
The high-level ministerial conference, co-chaired by the President of the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) and Chairman of the International Centre for AI Research and Ethics (ICAIRE) Board, Dr. Abdullah Alghamdi, and UNESCO Deputy Director-General, Asa Regner, attracted 52 ministers and international representatives, including Hon. Alpha Sesay.
The conference ended with a joint communique by Saudi Arabia, UNESCO and ICAIRE. The statement called for stronger international cooperation on AI ethics, reaffirming the 2021 UNESCO Recommendations as the global normative framework for ethical, safe, and inclusive AI.
The communique highlighted the need for multilateral dialogue, capacity building as well as bridging the digital divide especially for developing countries, while promoting responsible innovation, cultural diversity and the protection of human rights.
Speaking at the 4th UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence on Tuesday on the theme “Transforming Global Cooperation for Ethical AI Governance”, Hon Alpha Sesay disclosed that Sierra Leone had completed a national AI Readiness Diagnostic with the World Bank Group, under its fifty-million-dollar Digital Transformation Project.
He said It measured three things: Compute, Capacity, and Context — our infrastructure, our skills base, and our policy and legal environment – before any strategy was drafted.
“We did it before writing a strategy, not after. That sequencing was deliberate. It is the sequencing I would recommend to every Minister in this room, because it is the sequencing that determines whether the safeguards get built into the system or bolted on afterward.”
The top law enforcement advisor of the Government, outlined the progress Sierra Leone has made in several legislations such as the enactment of the Cybersecurity and Crime Act, the Electronic Transactions Act currently under review and the strong gender equality legislation and a Child Rights Act enacted this year, among others.
He emphasised that Sierra Leone does not yet have an enacted data protection law, noting that developing AI across government systems without an enforcement data protection regime is an “unmanaged risk.”
He told the forum that Sierra Leone’s position, is to enact the foundation before deploying the tools; classify AI systems affecting citizens’ rights as high-risk by default with mandatory ethical impact assessments; guarantee in-person access to all public services offered digitally; and build capacity across all governing institutions.
“What we do not yet have is an enacted data protection law, and we have no AI-specific statute at all. Our data protection framework remains at Bill stage. I say this because it disciplines everything else. Deploying artificial intelligence across government systems — in health, in social protection, in public administration, in law enforcement — without an enforceable data protection regime is not a governance strategy. It is an unmanaged risk. And in my assessment, it is the government’s risk, not the technology vendor,” he said.
Hon Sesay warned that the risks AI poses in a developing country context are real and specific, adding that automated decision-making in public services can entrench historical inequalities at scale and at speed.
He observed that “systems trained on incomplete or biased data will produce incomplete and biased outcomes — and in a country where marginalised communities are chronically under-represented in formal data systems, that is not a theoretical concern.”
He said that Technology-facilitated violence, misinformation, synthetic media, algorithmic discrimination were not distant problems, as they arrive “faster than our legal frameworks are moving.”
He further disclosed that Sierra Leone has tabled a regional data embassy framework at ECOWAS, arguing that no small state will secure leverage over major AI platforms negotiating individually. Hon. Sesay affirmed that Sierra Leone’s objective is clear: to harness AI for development while ensuring that technology remains grounded in human rights, inclusion, fairness and the rule of law.
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice was accompanied by State Counsel, Alpha Amadu Bah Esq.
