AI For Environmentally Responsible Growth: Advancing Green Corporate Governance In Africa Under SDG 12

Abstract

The multidisciplinary application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increasingly become attractive in the academic community in which researchers and scholars are interested in the intersectionality of green corporate governance and AI. There is a myriad of calls for integrating AI into green governance processes and systems in order to address deeply-seated environmental concerns in the corporate world. Although issues of responsible production (SDG 12) in green governance are currently advocated for by business scholars and professionals, the transformative power of AI is under-researched. Therefore, this paper aims to comprehensively synthesize the role of AI in green corporate governance in Africa. Notably, systematic literature review methodology has been applied to extract data sources from Scopus database, organizational databases, and Google Scholar. Data extracted with the aid of content analysis was subjected to thematic analysis as the themes were emerging from secondary sources. Despite the availability of deeply-seated ethical concerns, the findings showed that AI plays a supporting role in green corporate governance as it streamlines green corporate governance processes, automates ESG performance indicators, allows efficient monitoring of supply chain compliance, fosters algorithmic environmental risk prediction modeling, supports real-time internal audit, and ensures intelligent-powered ESG transparency and disclosure. It is concluded that AI plays a supporting role in green corporate governance in Africa. Therefore, African governments are recommended to embrace AI to address the deeply seated environmental concerns of the stakeholders in line with responsible production.