In WAIE+ monthly series on AI & Africa, Emsie Erastus, Head - Voices from Africa at WAIE+, interviews African experts working in AI and the emerging technology sector. On Tuesday, October 28, at 7 PM Central Africa Time (CAT) / 8 PM East Africa Time (EAT), she was joined by Mardiya Siba Yahaya, a Feminist Researcher, Sociologist, and Community Movement Builder, and Zanele Sokatsha, a Community Tech Researcher. In this session, they explored how AI could be developed using an Afro-feminist approach incorporating design justice principles and intersectional policymaking.

Our expert guests argued that for AI to be ethical and safe, design justice and feminist AI principles need to be integrated from the research and design to the deployment phases of the technology and its uses. They addressed the fundamental question of what an African feminist approach to AI development, deployment, and governance would involve in benefiting marginalized communities. Mardiya and Zanele drew from their research to make a case for meaningful civic participation in the design of emerging technologies, such as AI, that have and will disproportionately affect the lives of marginalized communities.

SPEAKER PROFILES:

Mardiya Siba Yahaya, Feminist Researcher, Sociologist & Community Movement Builder

Mardiya Siba Yahaya is a feminist researcher, sociologist and community movement builder. Her work makes the connection between technology, space, and communities. She worked as a data and digital rights researcher and eventually went on to lead the global community of digital rights practitioners at Team Community, based at Article 19. At Team Community, Mardiya developed and implemented strategies to weave and advance the sustainable movement building in digital rights communities within Africa, Asia, LATAM and MENA.

Mardiya was a fellow at University of San Diego’s Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice where she developed a research-based fiction work documenting the realities of existing in surveillance societies. She leads research investigating how market women in Ghana interact with and experience data innovation policies. Currently Mardiya is experimenting with technologies that enhance communal creative imagination and play. She has publications on surveillance, spatiality and community with Bloomsbury press, Feminist Africa, and Chatham house to name a few.

Zanele Sokatsha, Community Tech Researcher & Research Lead at Gender Rights in Tech (GRIT)

Zanele Sokatsha is a community tech researcher and the Research Lead at Gender Rights in Tech (GRIT), an organisation harnessing technology to address gender-based violence. Her work explores participatory and feminist approaches to technology within the African context. She currently leads two major research projects: investigating how cultural and linguistic barriers affect GBV survivors’ access to justice in South Africa through natural language processing and leading a youth-led study examining technology-facilitated gender-based violence among adolescents in South Africa. Zanele’s work bridges grassroots knowledge and digital innovation to build more inclusive, community-centred tech tools.