#46 Why Kenya denied copyrights to AI creators

The legal definition of creativity in East Africa has changed forever. In a high-stakes dispute involving an author who used AI tools to produce a series of commissioned books, Kenya’s Copyright Tribunal ruled that authorship is solely reserved for human beings.

While the judgment doesn’t ban creators from using tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney, it establishes a strict legal precedent: purely machine-generated outputs lack legal personality, and anyone hoping to protect or commercialise AI-assisted content must now prove "sufficient human intervention" and keep meticulous records of their own input. We unpack what this means for publishers, musicians, and agencies across the continent.

Other interesting stories in this episode:

• Nigeria's Responsible AI Leap: Overtaking regional giants like Kenya and Egypt, Nigeria has claimed the top spot in Africa on the Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI). The index singled out Nigeria as a global "Bright Spot" for combining massive technical talent programs (such as the 3MTT) with concrete child data protections.
• The Crypto Hack Paradox: H1 2026 saw a record 207 crypto hacks, yet total stolen funds dropped by 57% to $972 million. We look at the data to analyse whether smart contract auditing is improving or whether hackers are simply shifting to lower-value protocols.
• Rebuilding the Vaults: The rise of sophisticated, AI-driven phishing and automated exploits is forcing traditional African banks to abandon their old security playbooks and rebuild their cyber architecture from scratch to keep pace with algorithmic threats.

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