Strategic Educational Cooperation in the AI Era: African Agency, Digital Sovereignty, and Korea–Africa Education Partnerships

As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes development priorities, education has become a strategic arena for building skills, institutional capacity, research systems, and governance readiness. This article examines AI-related educational cooperation in Africa as a form of strategic educational cooperation, with particular attention to African agency, digital sovereignty, and education-development partnerships. Using qualitative policy discourse analysis, it analyses selected policy documents, strategic frameworks, summit declarations, and institutional materials, treating South Korea as the primary case and the European Union and Japan as bounded comparative reference points. The analysis shows that Korea’s Africa-facing agenda remains largely AI-adjacent, focusing on digital skills, TVET, scholarships, science-and-technology education, digital government, and youth capacity-building. By comparison, the European Union presents a more institutionalized and standards-linked model, while Japan foregrounds AI talent development and co-creation. Across the cases, partnership language often exceeds clear evidence of substantive African co-ownership. The article argues that AI-related educational cooperation can contribute to developmentally meaningful capacity-building only when African institutions participate substantively in agenda-setting, curriculum design, standards formation, knowledge governance, and institutional anchoring.