Mozambique Publishes a Draft National AI Strategy for Public Comment, Anchored on an Already-Created National AI Commission

On 25 May 2026, at the ITU 'AI for Good' workshop held during GITEX Kenya, Mozambique's National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (INTIC), chaired by Prof. Dr. Lourino Chemane, presented a draft National Artificial Intelligence Strategy targeting education, health, agriculture, energy, finance, climate change and digital public services. The government opened the draft for public comment from 4 May to 4 June 2026, with the technical component due for completion that June ahead of submission to the Council of Ministers and a targeted final approval by the end of 2026, following provincial consultations.

The strategy builds on an existing legal and institutional base rather than starting from scratch: Mozambique has already enacted a Cybersecurity Act and a Cybercrimes Act, issued regulations for data centres and cloud platforms, and created a National Commission for Artificial Intelligence. The draft proposes using AI regulatory sandboxes to test policy approaches before sector-wide implementation, and sets out ambitions to position Mozambique as a regional data-centre and cloud-computing hub, leveraging its electricity generation capacity, water resources and coastal access to submarine cables. Development support came from a wide multi-stakeholder group including UNESCO, the ITU, the European Union, the African Union, the World Bank, German development cooperation, the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) and the United Nations University's e-governance unit.

As a draft still under public consultation, the strategy has not yet been implemented, and no AI system, pilot outcome or public-value metric can yet be attributed to it. Its genuine points of substance — the pre-existing National AI Commission, the cybersecurity legal base, and the open comment process — distinguish it from a purely aspirational announcement, but Mozambique's own timeline puts final government approval and any operational rollout no earlier than late 2026.

Read the full analysis: https://www.africaainews.com/p/mozambique-presents-draft-ai-strategy