AI wildfire: A memo to Zimbabweans

Dr Evans Sagomba
Everything AI
AS Zimbabweans, we are sleepwalking into a digital nightmare.
And if we don’t wake up now, it is our children, our sons and daughters in Sakubva, Vengere and Gaza who will pay the price.
This is not about robots taking jobs or sci-fi fantasies. It is about the very fabric of truth being torn apart by a new breed of artificial intelligence tools, tools that can generate fake videos, clone voices, and create hyper-realistic images of people doing things they never did, saying things they never said.
These tools are not entertainment. They are dismantling our social infrastructure.
In recent months, AI systems like Sora 2 and other multimodal models have gone mainstream.
They can generate entire videos from a few lines of text. Want to see a fake news broadcast of a cyclone hitting Harare? Done. Want to create a pornographic video of a classmate, teacher, or public figure using their face and voice?
It is now possible. And it is happening. Right now. All over the world, including here in Zimbabwe.
The most vulnerable targets are children. They cannot distinguish between what is real and what is manufactured.
Imagine a 14-year-old girl in Mutare waking up to find a deepfake video of herself circulating on WhatsApp.
Her face, her school uniform, her voice, but none of it is real.
Try explaining to her classmates that it is AI-generated. Try undoing the damage. You can’t.
Teachers, headmasters, and learners are already being targeted in racist, sexually humiliating, and violent AI-generated content. And the platforms hosting this content?
They are doing next to nothing. Why? Because outrage drives clicks. Clicks drive advertising revenue. And in this economy of attention, safety is optional.
Zimbabwe is not a digital island.
Our children are on TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube. They are uploading, downloading, sharing, and consuming content at lightning speed. And the tools to manipulate that content are now free, fast, and frictionless. Yet too many schools are being seduced by the shiny promises of “AI in education.” We are seeing workshops titled: “Cool AI Tools for the Classroom” and “How to Use Chatbots to Boost Learning.”
We are being told this is the future. That we must “embrace disruption.” That if we don’t jump on the AI train, we’ll be left behind.
But let us pause and ask: who is selling us this vision? Who are these so-called “AI thought leaders” popping up on our timelines, offering consulting services, keynote speeches, and training packages?
Many of them are opportunists, people who reinvented themselves overnight in 2023, padded their CVs with buzzwords, and now peddle hype as strategy. They are not educators. They are marketers. And their product is fear: fear of being left behind, fear of being irrelevant, fear of missing out. They monetise that fear at scale, through conferences, consulting gigs, and corporate partnerships. And the casualties of their carelessness? Children.
Let us be honest: we are not building toys for classrooms. We are building the infrastructure of trust. The way a generation learns to believe or disbelieve, what it sees and hears.
Once that trust is broken, it cannot be repaired. No glossy AI literacy workshop will fix it.
No “Wow! Look what this chatbot can do!” moment will undo the trauma of a child being violated by synthetic media. We must stop importing tools without understanding their risks. We must resist the pressure to “move fast and break things”, especially when the things being broken are young minds, reputations, and lives.
So, what should we do?
Here is my call to every headmaster in Nyanga, every education officer in Makoni, every policymaker in Harare: press pause.
Today. Stop normalising ungoverned generative AI in youth programmes. Stop letting vendors dictate the pace of adoption. Start with three simple but powerful steps.
First, safety must come first. Before introducing any AI tool into a school, run a risk assessment. Not a marketing brochure. A real, honest, worst-case-scenario analysis. Ask: how could this tool be misused? What happens if a student uses it to create fake content? What safeguards are in place? Second, demand evidence and oversight. Don’t take vendors at their word. Ask for proof. Where does the data come from? Is it ethically sourced? Are there watermarks on generated content? Is there a verifiable chain of consent?
If a company cannot answer these questions, they have no business near our children. Third, insist on independent audits. Require third-party testing for bias, safety, and misuse. Do not let companies mark their own homework. We need independent watchdogs, local and international, who can evaluate these tools with rigour and integrity (The time for Zimbabwe’s AI Authority is now).
This is not anti-innovation. This is pro-safety. Pro-accountability. Pro-child. We cannot afford to be passive consumers of technology. We must be active stewards. We must ask hard questions. We must protect what matters most. Let’s not wait for a scandal to act.
Let us not wait for a viral deepfake of a Zimbabwean child to make headlines. Let us lead. Let us set the standard. Let us show the world that in Zimbabwe, we value safety over speed, integrity over hype, and children over clicks.
We have the power to shape this moment. But only if we choose courage over convenience.
To every school head, every parent, and every policymaker reading this: the time to act is now.
Not tomorrow. Not next term. Now. Because once the fabric of trust is torn, it cannot be stitched back together. And our children deserve better than to be the test subjects of greed and vanity.
Let us rise to the moment.