Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has always been embedded in complex networks of cultural imagination, corporate business, and sociopolitical power relations. The great majority of AI research around the world, and almost all commentary on that research, assumes that the imagination, business, and political systems of Western culture and the Global North are sufficient to understand how this technology should develop in future. This article investigates the context within which AI research is imagined and conducted in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, with implications for public policy, technology strategy, future research in development contexts, and the principles that might be applied as practical engineering priorities.

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