The founder of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), Mr Dapo Olorunyomi, has called for ethical, inclusive, and purpose-driven use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to safeguard democracy and strengthen media sustainability in Africa.
Olorunyomi made the call while delivering a keynote address at a forum themed “Unlocking Nigeria’s AI Potentials for Media Sustainability and Democracy,” convened by the New Thought Media Support Foundation (NTMSF). He was represented at the event by Mr Monsur Hussein, Innovation Lead at CJID.
He said technological revolutions throughout history have always carried both promise and peril, and Africa must deliberately shape AI’s trajectory to ensure it serves the public good.
“The survival of democracy depends not only on strong institutions and civic will, but also on innovation, knowledge and imagination,” Hussein said on behalf of Olorunyomi. “We must ask ourselves: will this transformation strengthen democracy or subvert it?”
Olorunyomi noted that AI is already transforming newsrooms worldwide, from transcribing interviews and detecting deepfakes to analysing vast datasets and generating stories. While these tools increase efficiency, they also raise ethical and democratic questions about control over information and judgment.
“The real danger is not that AI will replace journalists, but that it might replace judgment,” he warned. “Truth itself could become mechanised, stripped of nuance, divorced from ethics and devoid of empathy.”
He stressed that the question is no longer whether AI will change journalism, but “in whose image that change will occur.”
According to Olorunyomi, the traditional measures of media strength, circulation, advertising revenue and influence, have lost relevance. In the AI era, he said, media organisations must focus on trust, data, and relevance to sustain themselves.
“In a world flooded with falsehoods, credibility is our rarest asset. Sustainability depends less on how loud we speak and more on how faithfully we serve,” he said.
He highlighted the marginalisation of African languages, culture and data in global AI models, noting that platforms like GPT and Gemini are trained largely on Western data. This exclusion, he argued, has serious democratic consequences.
“When our languages are absent from technology, our realities become invisible,” he said. “Whoever controls knowledge controls power.”
CJID, he added, has begun efforts to bridge this gap through innovations like Dubawa Audio Platform, which transcribes and fact-checks radio content in several African languages, and a Dubawa WhatsApp chatbot that enables citizens to verify information in real time.
While advocating for efficiency and innovation in newsrooms, Olorunyomi emphasised that these must not come at the expense of truth.
“Efficiency should not come at the expense of truth. Innovation without purpose is vanity,” he stated.
He warned that personalisation algorithms, if unchecked, could lead to polarisation by feeding audiences only what they like rather than what they need to know.
Citing the book Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Olorunyomi said technological revolutions often enrich a few and exclude many unless citizens, institutions and innovators work together to demand inclusion.
“If AI becomes a tool only for profit, it will deepen inequality,” he said. “But if we shape it as a tool for justice, accountability and inclusion, it can become democracy’s greatest ally.”
He concluded with a rallying call for Africa to actively build, not just consume, AI technologies:
“The future we want is not one where machines tell our stories, but one where they help us tell them better. AI is not destiny—it is a tool. Its meaning lies in the hands of those who build it.”
