How Emerging Economies Can Participate Meaningfully in Global AI Safety Discussions

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How Emerging Economies Can Participate Meaningfully in Global AI Safety Discussions

AI SAFETY
 / 6 August 2026 / 0 Comments
Submitted by kennethngah2 on 6 August 2026

Artificial intelligence safety and governance discussions have expanded rapidly since the first major international summits. Yet these conversations remain heavily skewed toward a small group of high-income countries and the companies developing frontier systems. Emerging economies home to the majority of the world’s population often find themselves as rule-takers rather than co-creators. This imbalance is not only inequitable; it also weakens the effectiveness of any global safety regime. Risks, harms and implementation challenges look different in contexts of limited connectivity, informal economies, multilingual populations, weaker regulatory institutions and high exposure to imported technologies. Meaningful participation by emerging economies is therefore essential for legitimacy, better risk identification and workable global standards.

 

The Current Landscape and Barriers

Many early international forums, including elements of the G7, OECD and initial AI Safety Institute networks, have had limited representation from the Global South. Concentration of compute infrastructure, advanced research talent and evaluation capacity in a few countries means that the evidence base for “what is safe” is itself skewed. Safety frameworks frequently assume reliable electricity, functioning courts, strong data protection authorities, formal labor markets and robust civil society oversight conditions that do not hold uniformly across emerging economies.

 

As a result, certain harms receive less attention: performance failures on low-resource languages and local cultural contexts, labor market disruptions in agriculture and informal sectors, environmental costs of data centers in climate-vulnerable regions and the downstream effects of systems that perform adequately in high-resource settings but fail or are misused elsewhere. Delegates from countries such as Pakistan, South Africa and others have noted in multilateral settings that standards risk being written by a narrow group and then exported.

 

At the same time, positive shifts are underway. The UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (with Global South co-authorship), BRICS statements on AI governance and summits hosted in the Global South (notably India’s AI Impact Summit) have created new entry points. Kenya’s participation in the international AI Safety Institutes network and the establishment of regional initiatives signal growing agency.

 

Pathways to Meaningful Participation

Emerging economies can move from marginal presence to substantive influence through several complementary strategies.

 

Build and showcase domestic and regional capacity.
National AI strategies, regulatory sandboxes and evaluation capabilities allow countries to generate context-specific evidence rather than relying solely on imported risk assessments. Regional hubs such as efforts focused on African AI safety, peace and security can pool scarce expertise and compute. Producing rigorous local research on how systems perform (and fail) in real deployment contexts strengthens negotiating positions and helps correct blind spots in global frameworks.

 

Leverage and shape multilateral and plurilateral platforms.
UN-anchored processes offer broader legitimacy and inclusivity than exclusive clubs. Active engagement in the Global Dialogue on AI Governance and scientific panels ensures that development priorities, digital sovereignty concerns and diverse risk profiles are on the agenda. Parallel tracks through BRICS, the African Union, ASEAN and similar groupings enable coordination of common positions, reducing the disadvantage of negotiating individually against better-resourced actors. Hosting major convenings further shifts agenda-setting power.

 

Pursue South-South cooperation.
Collaboration on shared infrastructure, talent development, data governance models and joint evaluations multiplies limited resources. Initiatives that translate high-level commitments into coordinated action on regulation, compute access and skills help countries avoid fragmented or purely reactive approaches. Technology transfer, joint research and mutual recognition of standards can support both safety and development goals.

 

Focus on interoperable yet context-sensitive frameworks.
Rather than seeking identical rules everywhere, emerging economies can advocate “functional equivalence” shared safety outcomes achieved through approaches suited to local institutions and priorities. This includes pushing for benchmarks and evaluations that reflect global linguistic and demographic diversity, harm-reporting systems that capture who is affected and capacity-building linked to any new international standards.

 

Strengthen multi-stakeholder ecosystems.
Governments benefit when academia, civil society and local technical communities are equipped to contribute. Fellowships, training programs and inclusive national consultations improve the quality of positions taken internationally and help surface harms that official channels might miss.

 

What the Broader International Community Should Do

Meaningful participation cannot rest solely on the efforts of emerging economies. High-income countries and frontier developers should expand membership and observer status in technical networks, fund capacity building without attaching restrictive conditions, share evaluation tools and pre-deployment testing opportunities more widely and treat development and safety as interconnected rather than sequential priorities. Interoperability efforts must avoid becoming vehicles for exporting one regulatory model. Transparent, reciprocal information sharing on risks builds the trust needed for collective action.

 

Conclusion

Global AI safety will only be as robust as its weakest links in implementation and as legitimate as the breadth of voices that shape it. Emerging economies bring essential perspectives on real-world deployment, structural vulnerabilities and the developmental stakes of AI. By investing in domestic capacity, coordinating through inclusive multilateral and South-South channels, generating context-specific evidence and insisting on frameworks that respect sovereignty while enabling cooperation, these countries can move from the periphery to the center of discussions. The result would be safer systems, fairer distribution of benefits and risks and governance arrangements more likely to endure. The window to embed inclusive practices is open; using it wisely serves the interests of the entire international community.

 

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