The impact of the colonial legacy and the decolonization process on the rule of law in sub-Saharan Africa encompasses virtually every component of the rule of law—governance, accountability, transparency, corruption, human rights, gender rights, access to justice, and the assurance of clear, publicized, stable, and just laws. These remarks are intended to provide an overview of some of the consequences of that legacy on the slow and delicate march toward a future where states and their leaders across the region embrace and abide by the rule of law.

Thank you very much Professor Padideh Ala'i for that very kind introduction. I would also like to thank you Dean Camille A. Nelson of the Washington College of Law and the Society for this really special honor of inviting me to give the Grotius Lecture this year. I also thank the President of the Society, Catherine Amirfar, for her leadership and stewardship. My thanks too to my friend, Fleur Johns, for accepting to be the discussant for this lecture. Like you, I look forward to her response very much.

In the European Union (EU) and Europe in general, there is currently no legally binding definition of artificial intelligence (AI) nor a common EU framework for the regulation of AI. The EU Independent High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) defines AI systems as “software (and possibly also hardware) systems designed by humans that, given a complex goal, act in the physical or digital dimension by perceiving their environment through data acquisition, interpreting the collected structured or unstructured data, reasoning on the knowledge, or processing the information, derived from this data and deciding the best action(s) to take to achieve the given goal.” The European Commission in its white paper emphasized that a definition of AI “will need to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate technical progress while being precise enough to provide the necessary legal certainty.” In particular, the terms “data” and “algorithm” need to be defined. With the exception of autonomous vehicles, there are not many AI-specific binding rules yet. A common EU legal framework, which has been proposed in the European Commission's white paper, will build trust and provide legal certainty for consumers and businesses.