South Africa withdraws draft AI policy over AI citations hallucinations

South Africa withdrew a draft artificial intelligence policy after discovering that several of its academic citations were apparently AI hallucinations, raising questions about the state’s ability to regulate the fast-growing technology.

Communications Minister Solly Malatsi admitted that the department failed to spot the fabricated references before releasing the draft policy for public comment: “It’s a major embarrassment.”

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

South Africa with Joe's a draft artificial intelligence policy from over 2,400 cities and 178 and 178 countries. We bring you the Good Morning Africa podcast. Good morning Africa. Welcome aboard your personal Everything Business in Africa. I am Rither Dong. More follow us on Twitter, Advocate Financial News, and you can find me at RitherDong. Leaders across East Africa have been urged to rethink governance as institutions face rising cybercrime, youth unemployment, and climate-related disruptions. In this episode, lead chairperson Katri Karugawa talks about challenges no longer being futurisks but present realities affecting livelihoods.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

African institutions are facing major losses every day because of fraud and cybercrime. Youth unemployment is testing the social contract between the institutions we lead and the communities we serve. Today we have UNFPA here, and it will be good to hear their perspective. We're talking about a young population in our region, but with the same conversation, we are talking about significant unemployment of young people. What do we as boats do about them? And then there's climate change. I know there are skeptics, maybe even in this room, but the consequences are real. Food insecurity is part of us. Agriculture these days, when it's supposed to be harvest time, it is raining. When it's supposed to be planting time, the sun is at its best. How do we deal with that? Livelihoods across our region are impacted. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a future risk, it is a present one. And so what does this ask of us as boards? It's quite clear, and we are going to hear a lot of it today. But it asks us as a board to hold the boundary between board and management with discipline. When there's uncertainty, when there's ambiguity, when there's volatility, there's a temptation for the board members to get in, to get into the kitchen and start helping management to cook. I want to say, board members, our role is to set the strategic direction, to determine the risk appetite, and hold management accountable for navigating this environment. Our work is to listen, to be sounding boards, to challenge, to question, but never to do. It asks us as board members to move beyond oversight. We talk about that a lot, oversight. It's asking us to bring our best selves to bear, to bring our foresight to bear to the extent that we can. You know, when we talk about a future that is unknown, sometimes the word foresight even sounds odd. But that's what we are being asked to do. We're being asked to bring our insight, our experience. We're being asked to stress test everything that we are doing and to be okay when the results of our stress tests mean that we should do something different. It asks that we build institutional nerve, the capacity to decide with integrity, in the absence of all information that we need to have, to stay anchored to principle, even when expediency is tempting. And finally, we are asked to never lose sight of the human dimension because the people inside our organizations are also living through the same ambiguity, the same uncertainty. They are looking to us as boards, as leaders, to show them the way to go. They want us to be steady, they want us to be focused, they want us to be principled. The conversations we have today, the questions we ask, the standards we hold each other to, these are the things that build the diverse, credible, and high-performing boards that our region needs. And this is what we exist to do. And that is why we are having the conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Maltichoice's revenue fell 90% in the year ending March 2025, and the company lost nearly 3 million subscribers over the financial years 2024 and 2025. But Canal Plus said it's a public offer that will enhance long-term liquidity for the company. The transfer stock exchange is Africa's largest stock market with a capitalization of more than$1 trillion in Canal Blast, which went public on the London Stock Exchange, will join the nearly 200 non-financial private sector companies on the border, which is dominated by mining and energy sectors. British American Tobacco Mining Jack Glencore and Nigerian or Company Oando are among the 30 companies that accounted their presence on the stock exchange as a secondary listing. And a quick look at the other stories in South Africa with Georgia and Artificial Intelligence Policy after discovering that several of these academic citations were apparently AI hallucinations, raising questions about the state's ability to regulate the fast-growing technology. Communications minister Zulimalazee admitted that the department failed to support prefabricated references before releasing the draft policy for the public comment, adding that it is a major embarrassment that we don't draft a forecast on setting up several new watch at all because keep AI in check, including a dedicated commission and a special insurance fund to help people if a new technology caused hand in South Africa is not alone in being tripped by AI-generated content slipping past a human television that other global institutions from US courts and European universities had been in similar situations. More than a dozen African countries, including Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda, have signed up to the Trump administration's America for the global health strategy, which asks countries to share data about pathogens about epidemics as a condition for receiving the funding back data sharing content. If I'm gonna think about it to abandon talks here of a similar deal to Ghana's and led a Kenyan code to suspend implementation of an argument between Washington and Nairobi, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has previously expressed huge concerns over data and pathogen sharing between African countries and the US. Washington's pursuit of deals comes after last year's shattering of the US Agency for International Development, USAID, which had dispersed over$40 billion a year across 130 countries. USAID's closure, along with aid budget cuts by other Western countries, has left some African governments struggling to cover health budget shortfalls. Thank you for always waking up with us. Good morning, Africa, right after the K Financial. If you have suggestions or want to check out more stories, visit the website at the K Financial.com. Don't forget to subscribe. You can find us on all social media platforms at the K Financial, and you can find the link at the Knight.