A group of activists has turned to the High Court seeking an immediate intervention to prevent the rollout of artificial intelligence technologies they describe as high-risk, citing potential violations of constitutional rights.
The petitioners, including John Wangal, Peter Agoro, and Antony Manyara, argue that the rapid deployment of AI without proper safeguards threatens privacy, equality, freedom of expression and other fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
They warn that unregulated AI could also affect political participation, labour rights and consumer protections.
The case, filed against the ICT Cabinet Secretary and the Principal Secretary in the State Department for ICT, seeks conservatory orders restraining the respondents from deploying, authorising or operationalising AI systems pending the hearing and determination of the petition.
“Kenyans are experiencing and are imminently threatened with violation of the rights to privacy, equality, discrimination, dignity, fair administration, and unregulated AI deployment,” the petitioners said in their court papers before the Kerugoya High Court.
The petitioners filed the application under Articles 22, 23, and 159 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, as well as the Constitution of Kenya (Protection of Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) Practice and Procedure Rules, 2013. They argued that AI systems are being rolled out without adequate legal, regulatory, or institutional safeguards, leaving citizens exposed to violations of privacy, equality, dignity, freedom of expression, fair administrative action, political participation, labour rights and consumer protection.
The activists also raised concerns over the upcoming 2027 general elections, warning that unregulated AI could facilitate electoral manipulation through deepfakes, disinformation, algorithmic interference and other threats to free and fair elections.
In addition, they highlighted risks posed to vulnerable populations, consumers, the education system, academic integrity, intellectual property rights of Kenyan creators, and labour markets due to the rapid and unregulated deployment of AI technologies.
High Court Judge Edward Muriithi declined to grant the interim relief sought by the petitioners. While the court certified the application as urgent, it ruled that a conservatory order preventing AI deployment could not be issued at the ex parte stage due to the broad nature of the relief sought.
The court directed that the application be formally served on the respondents, setting a full hearing for February 19, 2026, to allow both parties to present arguments before any conservatory orders are considered.
The petition comes as Kenya faces significant challenges in building the infrastructure needed to support AI. The country has only two AI-capable data centres, compared with South Africa’s five, highlighting a growing technological gap that could limit Africa’s participation in the global AI economy.
An analysis by Data Centre Map, a global data centre directory, shows South Africa leads the continent with 60 data centres, followed by Nigeria with 22 and Kenya with 19. Most of these, however, lack AI capabilities.
South Africa has five AI-ready centres, while Nigeria has one. Fifteen of Kenya’s 19 data centres, mostly light-duty, are located in Nairobi.
While AI is seen as a tool for boosting productivity, experts warn that Africa is being left behind due to insufficient digital infrastructure, including high-speed fibre-optic connectivity and the heavy-duty data centres required to process massive datasets for training large language models and running AI-powered applications.
“Much of the content and processing needed to keep websites and programmes running is held in the cloud, which consists of thousands of processors in physical data centres,” the Data Centre Map analysis notes.
Yet Africa has far fewer of these than other major continents, leaving firms and governments dependent on overseas cloud regions and at risk of becoming mainly consumers, rather than producers, of AI technologies.
Globally, there are 10,793 data centres listed across 174 countries. The United States alone hosts nearly 40 per cent, followed by the UK with 498 and Germany with 470.
Countries with deep capital markets and established hyperscale cloud ecosystems dominate the AI infrastructure race, controlling both software and hardware, from GPUs to specialised networking.
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