The following article originates from AI & Innovation.
Theme Collection: Sovereign AI and Digital Sovereignty
Submission Deadline:
December 31, 2026
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has intensified debates over digital sovereignty worldwide. As AI systems increasingly shape economic activities, political discourse, and social interactions, the ability to develop indigenous AI capabilities and control digital infrastructure becomes essential to national autonomy. The emergence of sovereign large language models (LLMs), compute geopolitics driven by chip export controls, and digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiatives signal a fundamental shift: nations can no longer treat AI and digital technologies as neutral tools, but must strategically build technological alternatives to ensure self-determination.
Many nations face structural predicaments in achieving digital sovereignty. First, they exhibit high dependence on foreign digital infrastructure, from cloud services to AI platforms—a vulnerability starkly exposed by recent AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Cloudflare outages that disrupted services across continents. Second, bilateral trade agreements increasingly embed digital provisions that constrain policy space, as seen in the US-Malaysia agreement’s restrictions on data localization and digital services taxation. Third, sanctions and technology export controls have created divergent pathways, forcing some nations like Russia into accelerated self-reliance while others struggle with systematic capability deficits—countries that once possessed promising indigenous technology industries saw these capacities eroded, and capital barriers to building independent AI ecosystems have become nearly insurmountable.
This Theme Collection examines how different nations experience and respond to these challenges. It brings together scholars and practitioners from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Russia to analyze the structural constraints on digital sovereignty, the contested role of open-source AI as a pathway to autonomy, and the varied national responses to external pressures. Each contribution offers unique theoretical perspectives—from geopolitical analysis and historical political economy to international relations theory—while grounding arguments in concrete national experiences. The collection maintains a realistic assessment of both opportunities and limitations, recognizing that policy sophistication often outpaces implementation capacity, and that technological alternatives face formidable structural barriers. By establishing sovereign AI and digital sovereignty as legitimate fields of inquiry, this collection aims to provide critical analysis and evidence-based policy recommendations for navigating an increasingly contested digital landscape.
Topics
Topics for this call for papers include but are not restricted to:
Structural predicaments of digital sovereignty and pathways toward technological autonomy
Open-source AI and sovereign infrastructure: opportunities and limits for the Global South
The Digital Sovereignty Index: an assessment framework and AI-driven methodology
The new digital scramble for Africa: trade agreements, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and the call for a Digital Bandung
South Africa’s digital sovereignty: G20 agenda, structural constraints, and cautious prospects
The “poison pill” and beyond: Malaysia’s digital sovereignty after the US trade agreement
Breaking the stranglehold: how China is challenging US technological hegemony and reshaping the global order.
Russia’s digital sovereignty under sanctions: from defensive measures to proactive construction.
Guest Editors:
Prof. Elena Zinovieva
MGIMO University
Russia
Dr. Shameem Nawber
IDEAS-BRICS
China
Mr. Jie Xiong
Global South Academic Forum
China
Keywords:
Sovereign AI; Digital Sovereignty; AI Governance; Open-source AI; Digital Trade Agreements; Technology Sanctions; Digital Infrastructure; Technology Autonomy.
Submission Guidelines/Instructions:
Please refer to the Author Guidelines to prepare your manuscript. When submitting your manuscript, please answer the question, “Is this submission for a special issue?” by selecting the theme collection's title from the drop-down list.
About AI²:
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The academic journal Artificial Intelligence & Innovation (AI & Innovation, referred to as AI²) is jointly sponsored by the Institute for Digital Economy & Artificial Systems (IDEAS) of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Partnership on New Industrial Revolution Innovation Center, the Research Center for Technological Innovation at Tsinghua University, and the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of Xiamen University, and is published in collaboration with Wiley. Based on four strategic dimensions—basic theory of AI, engineering systems, social governance, and innovation ecosystems—the journal is dedicated to the comprehensive study of the field of intelligent science from an interdisciplinary perspective. It aims to promote global digital innovation and development research, establish an authoritative international discourse system, and assist government agencies and industries in formulating strategies adapted to the development of the digital economy.
IDEAS is a front-line research base for interdisciplinary studies, a high-end think tank for emerging strategic industries, a service platform for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and a cooperation channel for international professional talents, supported by Xiamen University and Moscow State University. Within the framework of the BRICS Partnership on New Industrial Revolution, IDEAS adheres to the philosophy of “Digitalization, for a Wiser Global Cooperation; Globalization, for a Wider Digital Inclusion,” working with all parties to jointly build an international collaborative R&D network for the digital economy and intelligent technology.
Review:
Yu Xiao, Executive Editor-in-Chief;
Sha Ming, Deputy Editor-in-Chief/Executive Manager;
Proofreading: Fang Fang, Head of the Journal Editorial Office.