The recent launch of the latest version of ChatGPT on 14th March 2023 is a typical instance of rapid digital innovations which Africa and the world at large have experienced since the 1990s. Other innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, and big data are all at the cutting edge, inducing considerable social and economic changes in Africa. Whether Africans have coped quickly or slowly with these rapid digital innovations, any coping is never a straightforward issue especially because of the African background.

In the African background are strong natural, historical, cultural, linguistic and philosophical deposits which have been evoked variously to cope with rapid digital innovations. There have been forms of coping which embrace these innovations for what is famously called digital transformations of individuals, organizations, nations, and the continent as a whole. There have been forms of coping which resist, delay, keep at arm’s length, or even refuse some of these innovations entirely. This is because they, especially AI technologies, are perceived as threats to African lives. There have also been forms of coping in terms of financial and infrastructural struggles to access such new technologies, leaving many societies to lag in terms of adoption.