Minister for Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovation, Samuel Nartey George, has raised an alarm over the growing erosion and loss of cultural identity among African children.
He blamed foreign digital platforms and artificial intelligence algorithms for systematically undermining traditional African values.
Speaking at the 4th Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family, Values and Sovereignty, the minister highlighted how AI-powered beauty filters and content recommendations are reshaping the self-perception of young Africans, particularly girls, by promoting Eurocentric beauty standards while devaluing natural African features.
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“Beauty and social validation, the AI trains African girls to reject natural appearances. And so you’ll see all the apps, and they all have filters. And what do those filters do? They take away your natural face and give you artificially made-up European-looking faces,” Sam George stated.
He added, “You can bleach black and make it look white, but you can never color white and make it black. Black does not break.”
The minister warned that digital platforms are deliberately injecting values such as gender deconstruction, hyper-individualism, and anti-family narratives that contradict core African principles.
He noted that algorithms are bypassing traditional structures of authority, including parents and elders, making digital platforms the primary source of socialization for a new generation.
“For millennia, the African identity has been a respect for the elderly and our communal living. Today, the new generation of Africans has no respect for the elderly and family councils, and elders and community ceremonies are now a thing of folklore and the distant past,” he lamented.
According to the minister, 78% of African children’s content comes from foreign platforms whose algorithms are not trained on African values, history, or epistemologies. This, he said, is leading to a gradual dilution of Africanness across the continent.
Sam George stressed that the battle for Africa’s future is being fought through the minds of its children, urging African nations to reclaim control over digital spaces to preserve cultural identity and protect the innocence of the younger generation.