Deploying Artificial Intelligence to Achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals : Enablers, Drivers and Strategic Framework

This book provides research insights into how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – 17 interconnected goals designed to address the world’s most pressing challenges by 2030. It reviews the SDGs and discusses why progress has been mixed and uneven across different countries, regions and goals. The book posits that attaining the SDGs will depend on enhanced global cooperation, increased funding, improved infrastructure, public-private partnerships, regional/continental integration, addressing the climate crisis, inclusive economic transformation, and visionary leadership. More specifically, the publication advocates leveraging innovative and transformative technologies, particularly the deployment of AI. The research acknowledges the risks of digital imperialism, data colonialism and technological exclusion, especially in emerging and least industrialised economies. Hence, in deploying AI to achieve the SDGs, the book puts a premium on decoloniality in AI systems and democratising AI technology.

• Provides a critique of the current SDGs approach by reframing the goals as a comprehensive risk assessment of humanity’s most pressing threats in the 21st century;
•  Features broad and holistic interventions to accelerate the attainment of the SDGs;
• Provides a comprehensive but accessible introduction to AI concepts and advanced innovations such as AlphaFold, ChatGPT-4, DeepSeek-R1, Grok 3, and autonomous vehicles (drones and driverless cars);
• Discusses the AI strategies of leading economies and assesses the impact of AI on geopolitics;
•  Provides a comprehensive critique of global AI efforts by the UN and African Union, while proffering alternative paradigms and frameworks;
• Presents the enablers, drivers and strategic framework of AI deployment to achieve the SDGs;
• Develops and presents details of six distinct but related components of a novel Strategic Framework for developing and adopting AI – Vision, Strategy, Policy, Governance, Legislation/Regulations, and Implementation Matrix;
• Outlines specific ways that AI can be deployed to achieve each of the 17 SDGs and reviews seven countries’ experiences;
• Explores an innovative, forward-looking, and technology-driven framework for equitable global socio-economic transformation to succeed the SDGs post-2030.

Prof. Dr. Eng. Arthur G.O. Mutambara is Director and Full Professor at the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Institute for the Future of Knowledge (IFK) in South Africa, where he also serves as Head of the Decentralised Artificial Intelligence and Control Systems (DAICS) Research Group. He is a world-renowned control systems specialist, roboticist, academic, author and technology strategist. Professor Mutambara is a key African thought leader and presenter on the raging Artificial Intelligence revolution. He teaches Control Systems in two departments at UJ: Mechanical Engineering Science and Electrical and Electronic Engineering Science. Engineer Mutambara previously taught and conducted research in Control Systems, Robotics and Mechatronics in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University-Florida State University (FAMU-FSU), both in the United States.

He was also a Research Scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a Visiting Professor at MIT, and a Visiting Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. In his academic research and teaching, he has received outstanding reviews and praise from students and peers worldwide. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), a Professional Engineer, a Fellow of the Zimbabwe Institution of Engineers (ZIE), a Fellow of the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences (ZAS), and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Prof. Mutambara is a distinguished and prolific author of eight books. He has written three electrical engineering books widely used in undergraduate and graduate engineering (teaching and research) programmes in the United States, Europe, China, Japan and Africa: Decentralized Estimation and Control for Multisensor Systems (1998), Design and Analysis of Control Systems (1999), and Design and Analysis of Control Systems: Driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2024). He holds a PhD in Robotics and Mechatronics, and an MSc in Computer Engineering, both from the University of Oxford. Mutambara was there as a Rhodes Scholar from September 1991 to March 1995. He graduated with a BSc (Honours) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zimbabwe in 1990.

Beyond Engineering and Science, Professor Mutambara is a distinguished Pan-Africanist and a prolific public intellectual across Africa and globally. He has conducted outstanding presentations on leadership, African unity, regional integration, management, and business strategy throughout the world, in addition to motivational speeches and seminars. He has authored three books on Thought Leadership: In Search of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream: Volume I: The Formative Years and the Big Wide World (1983–2002); Volume II: The Path to Power (2003–2009); Volume III: Ideas & Solutions: Deputy Prime Minister and Beyond (2009–2023). He has also just published (2025) the groundbreaking research book Artificial Intelligence: A Driver of Inclusive Development and Shared Prosperity for the Global South. In 2007, Mutambara was accorded the World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader status and subsequently attended WEF events from 2007 to 2013 in Davos (Switzerland), China, India and Africa.

Professor Mutambara is the Former Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) of Zimbabwe. He was one of the three Principals who created and led the Government of National Unity (GNU) in Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013. The other two were the late former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the late former President Robert Mugabe. As the Deputy Prime Minister, his key functions included assisting the Prime Minister in policy formulation by the Cabinet and supervision of policy implementation by the Council of Ministers. He also specifically supervised the Ministries under the Infrastructure Cluster, such as Energy and Power Development, Transport and Infrastructure, Information Communication Technologies, Water Resources and Development, and Public Works. Professor Mutambara coordinated regional policy formulation within these sectors across SADC and COMESA. Furthermore, DPM Mutambara drove three critical national efforts of the GNU: the development of a Shared National Vision, the Rebranding of Zimbabwe and the formulation of a National Infrastructure Master Plan.

Professor Mutambara was also a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in the United States (Chicago Office) and Director of Electronic Payments at Standard Bank in South Africa.