‘It will never cover what’s authentic’: African music industry weighs up AI risks and rewards

L ast July, the Nigerian singer-songwriter Fave found herself caught up in a viral moment: an unauthorised version of a track featuring an AI choir had been released, quickly becoming an internet sensation. To get ahead of the situation, she recorded her own remix that integrated the AI-assisted song and added it to her discography. “In my view, [that] was smart and very business aware,” Oyinkansola Fawehinmi, a Lagos-based entertainment lawyer, observed a few months later . “She essentially reclaimed the ‘AI version’ and released it as her own official expression.” Many of Africa’s music markets are seen as particularly vulnerable to the threat of AI-generated music plagiarising the work of real-life artists, due to comparatively weak legal frameworks around intellectual property protection. There are similar fears over the wider deepfake market. On Monday, South Africa withdrew the draft of its national AI policy after revelations, ironically, of AI-generated citations within it. AI was the focus of the Atlantic Music Expo held this month in Cape Verde , one of the few African states with a dedicated AI policy. Benito Lopes, the expo’s director since 2024, said the discussions were meant to give performers “more knowledge to explore [AI] the best way without losing their human identity and their creativity”. …