Decolonizing Digital Sovereignty: An Operational Framework and Policy Analysis of AI Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes value-laden societal outcomes worldwide, the imperative for robust governance has become critical. Yet the global AI governance literature remains dis- proportionately Western-centric, frequently overlooking the structural and infrastructural realities of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper bridges the gap between theoretical critique and practical implementa- tion by proposing a Five-Pillar AI Governance Framework tailored to SSA. The framework is substantiated through a qualitative documen- tary analysis of contemporary African policy developments, employing a most-different systems comparative design across four divergent reg- ulatory pathways: Rwanda (top-down institutional integration), Nigeria (bottom-up ecosystem co-creation), South Africa (independent regula- tory enforcement), and the African Union (transnational coordination). Policy evidence is extracted and coded against three governance indi- cators, infrastructural sovereignty, stakeholder participation, and insti- tutional enforcement, and mapped onto the proposed structural pillars to produce an operational governance matrix. We situate the framework against global governance instruments and the critical data-colonialism literature, and provide an implementation roadmap with concrete eval- uation metrics tied to African development priorities. The resulting ar- chitectural blueprint offers African policymakers a practical roadmap for harnessing AI safely while safeguarding local digital sovereignty.