A.I in Sudan: a Partner for Peace?
By Lilianna Xing
Search up “Ukraine A.I.” and you get violence: thousands of writeups, videos, and images of “killer drones”.
Search up “Sudan AI”. There are various stories: political deepfakes, ones of victims, concerns about the inability of image verification to keep up with the spread of A.I. generated content. And in one of the most deadly conflict zones today, there is hope that A.I. use can be directed toward the building of peace.
Building a democratic government in conflict zones such as Sudan can involve a torrent of new bills and suggested constitutional reforms. Yet for citizens to be actively engaged, these efforts must be effectively communicated. A.I. can aid in rapidly summarising long documents crowded with legal jargon and customising this jargon to different literacy levels. Memory work, seen by some as an important part of post-conflict reconciliation, can also be supported by A.I. In Columbia A.I. was used to synthesise various testimonies. This is part of creating a ‘national memory’; a national, shared understanding of what happened on which future policies and reparations can build. The transparency and e-governance that this reflects are part of three core pillars, suggested by Arabi and Elkhader, to improve the efficiency of democratic systems through the implementation of A.I.
Reinforcing capacity is another. In a dynamic environment, they suggest that A.I., with access to data across the country, could have unique capabilities to customize civil servant training and simulate policies in different regions. However, at the same time that scholars have noted the role A.I. may play in the future, it appears that A.I. currently lags behind human analysts in accuracy.
The last pillar is participatory and data-driven decision-making platforms. The suspension of aid from Médecins Sans Frontières in a camp of 500,000 people displaced reflects the risks that healthcare workers face: a report from May 2025 reported that 318 healthcare workers had died. In the midst of this crisis, Arabi and Elkhader suggest that A.I. could aid in more effectively distributing healthcare resources.
Others also envision a role for A.I. in improving healthcare access. Al-Moghirah Al-Amin Gad Al-Sayed, director of the department of therapeutic medicine at Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health, has suggested that in the absence of traditional services, A.I. could play a role in filling the gap between healthcare needs and capacity through diagnoses. Zipline, a company that delivers medical supplies by drone, is another example. After flight path confirmation, the drone is fully autonomous but still subject to human oversight. In Rwanda, this company has been used to deliver blood donations, with notable success in areas that are difficult to reach. The rapid access enabled by these drones provides immediate care to trauma patients.
The uses of A.I. suggested here share a common theme. A.I. is a potential partner in the path toward peace in conjunction with human supervision and direction, not a superseding force.
