Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights in the African Human Rights System: Dignity, Equality and Remedy Under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, with Reference to Nigeria

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is spreading across Africa largely through procurement of surveillance, biometric identity and automated decision-making systems designed elsewhere, raising serious concerns for human rights. Global debates on AI and human rights have centred on European and North American instruments, while the African human rights system, built on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the African Commission and the African Court and supplemented in West Africa by the ECOWAS Court, has received little attention. This study addresses that gap. Its objectives were to determine how the African Charter's provisions on dignity and autonomy, equality and non-discrimination and the right to a remedy apply to AI, to assess the capacity of the system's institutions to give effect to them, and to propose reforms, with Nigeria as an anchor. The study adopted a doctrinal and normative research design. It analysed primary sources, including the African Charter, the Court Protocol, the Commission's Resolution 473 on AI, the 2019 Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, the Malabo Convention, the Nigerian Constitution and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, together with a purposive sample of 28 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2023 and 2026, each verified against its Crossref publisher record and screened for retractions. The analysis finds that the Charter's provisions are broad enough to apply to AI, but that protection fails in practice: the Charter lacks an express right to privacy, affected people cannot prove indirect algorithmic discrimination without access to systems and data, individuals in most states, including Nigeria, cannot bring cases directly to the African Court, and compliance with regional decisions is weak. No single institution suffices, and the ECOWAS Court emerges as the most promising regional forum for West Africa. The study also argues that the Charter's relational conception of the person offers a basis for recognising collective AI harms. It recommends a Commission general comment on AI, mandatory human rights impact assessments, transparency and contestability rights with a shifted burden of proof, a Nigerian declaration accepting direct access to the African Court, and capacity-building for strategic litigation.