Center for African Studies

AI in Africa Speaker Series: Decolonial Imaginaries of AI: Contested Visions of Modern State Building in Africa

The Digital Africa working group at the Center for African studies is proud to present the first talk of our AI in Africa speaker series, by Yousif Hassan University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please see below for information about the talk.

About the Speaker:

Yousif Hassan is Illinois Distinguished Fellow at the School of Information Sciences and Faculty Affiliate with the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research examines the relation between race, digital technology, and technoscientific capitalism. Dr. Hassan’s work is at the intersection of technology and public policy focusing on racial justice and the social, economic, and political implications of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and data. His most recent project investigates the sociotechnical knowledge production practices of the state, scientists, and the tech industry examining the development of AI and its innovation ecosystem across multiple African countries.

Abstract:

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a matter of public controversy in the Global South and Global North. In Africa, AI controversaries are entangled with different visions of prosperity, progress, and modernity. For example, the African Union 2063 agenda envisions smart technology including AI as playing a pivotal role in an overarching vision of an African Renaissance, a shift from anti-colonial struggle to inclusive social and economic development in a globalized world. On the other hand, many local AI advocates contend that AI development leads to AI exacerbating problems of inequality and injustice in the continent. This situation is further problematized by growing transnational interest of several nation states including Canada, Sweden, Germany, China and the US in AI development in Africa.

Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic case studies across multiple African countries, this talk examines how AI is (re)configuring the debate about development and modernization in Africa. Looking through the analytical lens of science and technology studies and contemporary African studies on race, coloniality, and the political economy of technoscience, I examine the different visions of AI to address Africa’s long standing economic and social issues.

April 20 @ 3:00 – 5:00, in GRI 404