In May 2026, The Pope wrote a declaration about artificial intelligence. A Catholic university in Abuja read it, took it seriously, and became the first institution in Africa to formally sign the resulting compact. That is the story, and it is more interesting than it might initially appear.
Veritas University, Abuja, signed the Humanitas AI Compact at its 154th Senate session on 1 July 2026. The compact is the institutional response to Magnifica Humanitas, a papal declaration from Pope Leo XIV calling on universities and institutions of higher learning to take responsibility for ensuring AI advances human dignity rather than diminishing it. The Vice-Chancellor, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Ichoku, signed on behalf of the institution, becoming the first African university to make this commitment formal.
Other co-signatories include the Commonwealth Forum in London, the Centre for AI, Digital Justice and Economic Rights (CADER), and the African Institute of Public Health in Addis Ababa. This is not a Nigerian story alone. It is a cross-continental, cross-institutional commitment to a specific vision of what ethical AI looks like — one grounded in the dignity of the most vulnerable people, not in the convenience of the most powerful.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Major Highlights
- Veritas University, Abuja became the first university in Africa to sign the Humanitas AI Compact; a formal institutional response to Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas declaration on AI and human dignity.
- The signing took place during the university’s 154th Senate session, with Vice-Chancellor Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Ichoku signing on behalf of the institution.
- Co-signatories include the Commonwealth Forum (London), the Centre for AI, Digital Justice and Economic Rights (CADER), and the African Institute of Public Health (Addis Ababa), making this a multi-continental commitment.
- The compact is built on seven guiding principles: human dignity, subsidiarity, the common good, the universal destination of goods, truth, and the integral development of the human person.
- Participating institutions pledged seven commitments, including reviewing academic programmes for the AI era, directing AI innovations towards vulnerable populations, and contributing to AI governance and ethical policymaking.
- The compact explicitly rejects the notion that AI possesses genuine creativity or moral discernment, and cautions against depending solely on algorithmic systems for decisions that significantly affect human lives.
- The next phase of the compact will expand participation to educational institutions, healthcare organisations, public agencies, and civil society groups across Africa and beyond.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KINI BIG DEAL
By being the first African institution to sign the Humanitas AI Compact, Veritas University is placing African higher education at the beginning of a global conversation rather than at the end of it. The compact originated from a papal declaration, but its scope is explicitly cross-denominational and cross-institutional. The question it asks — who should AI serve? — is one every African university, hospital, and government agency needs to be asking right now.
The commitment to direct AI innovations towards “the poor, the sick, migrants, people displaced by war, women, girls, and other vulnerable groups” is not a nice-to-have. It is the entire point. Most of the AI tools being built and deployed globally are designed around the needs of people who already have resources. The Humanitas Compact is asking institutions to reverse that priority. A Nigerian university signing first is a statement that Africa is not going to wait for Silicon Valley to build AI for us.
Read more: The Sun Nigeria — Veritas University emerges first in Africa to sign Humanitas AI Compact
