by Lea Moutault
The “Eastern Africa in the World” Seminar Series’ inaugural public seminar began with a profound reckoning with the ‘thingness’ of AI, from its multiple and complex manifestations in eastern Africa.
As the session’s chair, Prof Sharath Srinivasan encouraged the panelists and the audience to sit with the uncertainties, possibilities, and histories of our current ‘AI moment’ and ask, “What in the world is AI?” Amanuel Kebede reminded us of the significant impact of discourse and narrative around the ‘AI moment’, through the Ethiopian state’s attempts to create a self-justifying image of progress and modernity through AI adoption. In discussions of the future – of a nation, region, or continent – AI functions as an anti-politics machine, he argued, foreclosing alternatives through the language of inevitable transformation.
Dr Stephanie Diepeveen traced the material manifestations of state-led projects, through Kenya’s smart city initiatives. The locations of smart CCTV cameras she studied were not integrated with the rest of the city, and often in disrepair. She grounded sensationalist visions of Chinese technology in Africa in long histories of Kenyan state surveillance projects, and the longstanding politics of visibility.
Dr Adio Dinika brought the often-invisible labour behind seamless software interfaces to the fore: “if you want to know what AI is,” he said, “don’t ask what the machine is; look at the people.” And those people sit in digital sweatshops, labelling data and monitoring harmful content, often at great mental harm. Seen from eastern Africa, Dr Dinika argued, the region is not standing outside the door, waiting to be let in and included in the transformation. ChatGPT is ‘made in Africa’ – AI arrived on the continent first, not last.
Dr George Karekwaivanane encouraged us to sit with these contrasting ideas, instead of jumping to determine and categorise the empty signifier – AI which promises whatever different actors want it to promise. He turned our attention to the room for resistance and agency within the not-yet-ness of AI, and the importance of thinking critically at this juncture.
Over 80 people attended the event. Questions from the audience brought prescient and urgent concerns to the fore of this ‘AI moment’. Members discussed the politics of accessibility, and the limitations of efforts to produce large language models in indigenous African languages. Amanuel Kebede and Dr Stephanie Diepeveen noted, for example, the collectives that work to create languages to empower civil society to express critical perspectives on emerging technologies, often imported from abroad, and to reshape these to create space for indigenous re-appropriations.
Dr Adio Dinika contextualised these interactions in the potential for pan-Africanist movements for reparations, to address global inequalities in access, and the exploitation of labour on the African continent that continues to play a crucial role in creating ‘AI’ itself. The audience expressed a particular concern with the sidelining of African youth as contract labourers in ‘data work’.
Dr George Karekwaivanane discussed the support needed to empower civil society to speak back to global data companies, and the efforts being made to increase policymakers’ knowledge and awareness of what AI ‘actually is’, to counter arguments about job creation that ignore the quality of this employment, for example.
Each of these projects sought to pause the flurry of anticipation around AI’s radical potential, and to create spaces for conscious, emancipatory interactions with AI.
Sign up to our mailing list for details of the next events in the series at tinyurl.com/eafriwo. We hope you join us for the next event in the series, “Urbanities and global circuits: place and place-making in the world”, on Monday 20th April at 12pm UK time and 2pm EAT.
