Afrika Techno Policy

The statistics are stark and sobering. According to Fortune, approximately half of all internet traffic now comes from non-human sources . Imperva’s 2024 Bad Bot Report identifies nearly 50% of web activity as originating from bots; 20% of which are explicitly malicious. This is not a technical inconvenience or a cybersecurity concern. It represents nothing less than the undermining of the foundational economic model that has sustained the internet as we know it for the past three decades. We are witnessing the collapse of the ‘attention economy’, the system whereby human attention becomes the primary commodity being harvested, packaged, and sold to advertisers.  The entire edifice of the contemporary internet rests on a simple premise: that clicks, views, and engagement metrics represent genuine human interest and, by extension, purchasing intent. When bot networks can simulate this engagement at scale, they do not create noise in the data. Rather they destabilize the value pro...

The turn to Ubuntu in AI ethics scholarship marks a critically important shift toward engaging African moral and politico-philosophical traditions in shaping technological futures. Often encapsulated through the phrase “a person is a person through other persons”, Ubuntu is frequently invoked to highlight ontological interdependency, communal responsibility, relational personhood, and the moral primacy of solidarity and care. It is often positioned as an alternative to individualism, with the potential to complement or “correct” Western liberal frameworks. But what does this invocation actually do? Is Ubuntu being used to transform how we think about ethical challenges in AI, or is the emerging discourse merely softening existing paradigms with a warmer cultural tone?   The emerging pattern A recurring pattern across the literature reveals a limited mode of Ubuntu engagement. It begins with a description of AI-related ethical concerns: dependency, bias, privacy, data coloni...

In recent months, I have been thinking a lot about the ethics that should guide the development and deployment of modern technology. A lot can be said about getting the foundation right to realise the ultimate purpose of technology - which is to benefit human beings and the world in which we live. The lens through which we view technology, will ultimately determine the lens through which we create it. Naturally, the lenses can take varying forms. They can be   philosophical, ideological, political, ethical or moral perspectives.   Whichever perspective one chooses should ensure a better life for all. Say, then, we make the correct choice and we manage to create technology that   serves that ultimate goal. Does it go without saying that the result will be just that? In other words, say we create technology which understands that umuntu, ngumuntu ngabantu, and which seeks to protect that ethic, what happens when it is deployed? What happens when human beings, beautiful a...