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Contents
editorial
KOFI AGAWU
African Art Music and the Challenge of Postcolonial Composition
PAUL ZILUNGISELE TEMBE
China’s Effective Anti-Corruption Campaign
DILIP M. MENON
Changing Theory: Thinking Concepts from the Global South
BEN WATSON
Talking about music
Theme AI in Africa
blk banaana
An (Other) Intelligence
VULANE MTHEMBU
Umshini Uyakhuluma (The Machine Speaks) – Africa and the AI Revolution: Exploring the Rapid Development of Artificial Intelligence on the Continent.
OLORI LOLADE SIYONBOLA
A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence in Africa
CHRIS EMEZUE & IYANUOLUWA SHODE
AI and African Languages: Empowering Cultures and Communities
NOLAN OSWALD DENNIS
Toward Misrecognition. | Project notes for a haunting-ting
SLINDILE MTHEMBU
AI and documenting black women's lived experiences: Creating future awareness through AI-generated sonics and interpretive movement for the future of freeing suffering caused on black bodies.
ALEXANDRA STANG
Artificially Correct? How to combat bias and inequality in language use with AI
BAKARY DIARRASSOUBA
Bambara: The Jeli (Griot) Project
ROY BLUMENTHAL
Artificial Intelligence and the Arcane Art of the Prompt
AI GENERATED
"AI on Artificial Intelligence in Africa" and "Exploring its impact on Art and Creativity"
JULIA SCHNEIDER
AI in a biased world
MBANGISO MABASO
Bana Ba Dinaledi: Telling African Stories using Generative AI Art.
ALEX TSADO & BETTY WAIREGI
African AI today
BOBBY SHABANGU
Using Artificial Intelligence to expand coverage of African content on Wikipedia
DARRYL ACCONE
Welcome to The End of Beauty: AI Rips the Soul Out of Chess
VULANE MTHEMBU & ChatGPT
Hello ChatGPT - A conversation with OpenAI's Assistant
DIMITRI VOUDOURIS
Evolution of Sιήκ
STEFANIE KASTNER
Beyond the fact that most robots are white: Challenges of AI in Africa
MARTIJN PANTLIN
Some notes from herri’s full stack web developer on the AI phenomenon
galleri
THANDIWE MURIU
4 Universal Truths and selected Camo
ZENZI MDA
Four Portals
TIISETSO CLIFFORD MPHUTHI
Litema
NESA FRÖHLICH
Agapanthus artificialis: Biodiversität im digitalen Raum. Vierteilige Serie, Johannesburg 2022.
STEVEN J FOWLER
2 AI collaborations and 9 asemic scribbles
PATRICIA ANN REPAR
Integrating Healing Arts and Health Care
SHERRY MILNER
Fetus & Host
borborygmus
JANNIKE BERGH
BCUC = BANTU CONTINUA UHURU CONSCIOUSNESS
GWEN ANSELL
Jill Richards: Try, try, try...
VULANE MTHEMBU & HEIKKI SOINI
Nguni Machina remixed
AFRICAN NOISE FOUNDATION
Perennial fashion – noise (After Adorno).
RAJAT NEOGY
Do Magazines Culture?
NDUMISO MDAYI
Biko and the Hegelian dialectic
LEHLOHONOLO MAKHELE
The Big Other
frictions
KHAHLISO MATELA
At Virtue’s Zone
DIANA FERRUS
In memory of “Lily” who will never be nameless again
VUYOKAZI NGEMNTU
Six Poems from the Shadows
SIHLE NTULI
3 Durban Poems
SIBONELO SOLWAZI KA NDLOVU
I’m Writing You A Letter You Will Never read
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
People of the Townships episode 3
claque
SIMON GIKANDI
Introducing Pelong Ya Ka (excerpt)
UNATHI SLASHA
"TO WALK IS TO SEE": Looking Inside the Heart - Sophonia Machabe Mofokeng’s Pelong ya Ka
VANGILE GANTSHO
Ilifa lothando – a Review of Ilifa by Athambile Masola
ZIZIPHO BAM
Barbara Boswell found in The Art of Waiting for Tales
WAMUWI MBAO
Hauntings: the public appearance of what is hidden
CHARL-PIERRE NAUDÉ
Dekonstruksie as gebundelde terrorisme
VUYOKAZI NGEMNTU
Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili - A Review
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
Taking radical optimism beyond hope - Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South Africa’s Shack Settlements
PATRIC TARIQ MELLET
WHITE MISCHIEF – Our past (again) filtered through the lens of coloniality: Andrew Smith’s First People – The lost history of the Khoisan
CHANTAL WILLIE-PETERSEN
BHEKI MSELEKU: an infinite source of knowledge to draw from
JEAN MEIRING
SULKE VRIENDE IS SKAARS - a clarion call for the importance of the old and out-of-fashion
GEORGE KING
Kristian Blak String Quartets Neoquartet
ekaya
PAKAMA NCUME
A Conversation with Mantombi Matotiyana 9 April 2019
KYLE SHEPHERD
An Auto-Ethnographic Reflection on Process
PAULA FOURIE
Ghoema
DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN
The Art of Cape Town Singing: Anwar Gambeno (1949-2022)
ESTHER MARIE PAUW
Something in Return, Act II: The Blavet-Varèse project
STEPHANUS MULLER
Afrikosmos: the keyboard as a Turing machine
MKHULU MNGOMEZULU
Ubizo and Mental Illness: A Personal Reflection
off the record
FRANK MEINTJIES
James Matthews: dissident writer
SABATA-MPHO MOKAE
Platfontein, a place the !Xun and Khwe call home
NEO LEKGOTLA LAGA RAMOUPI
A Culture of Black Consciousness on Robben Island, 1970 - 1980
NELSON MALDONADO-TORRES
Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality*
ARYAN KAGANOF
An interview with Don Laka: Monday 10 February 2003
JONATHAN EATO
Recording and Listening to Jazz and Improvised Music in South Africa
MARKO PHIRI
Bulawayo’s movement of Jah People
STEVEN BROWN
Anger and me
feedback
MUSA NGQUNGWANA
15 May 2020
ARYAN KAGANOF / PONE MASHIANGWAKO
Tuesday 21 July 2020, Monday 27 July, 2020
MARIA HELLSTRÖM REIMER
Monday 26 July 2021
SHANNON LANDERS
22 December 2022
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
the selektah
CHRIS ALBERTYN
Lost, unknown and forgotten: 24 classic South African 78rpm discs from 1951-1965.
hotlynx
shopping
contributors
the back page
CHRIS BRINK
Reflections on Transformation at Stellenbosch University
MARK WIGLEY
Discursive versus Immersive: The Museum is the Massage
© 2023
Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute
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    #08
  • Theme AI in Africa

STEFANIE KASTNER

Beyond the fact that most robots are white: Challenges of AI in Africa

Some years ago, when I started my research on orality, I had a discussion with friends in Ivory Coast and we were talking about the questions of when to speak out loud and when to listen, when to share experiences and observations and when to learn from others. At the time my friends were very clear in their opinion:

Whenever you observe something others might not see you need to speak out.

That’s what encourages me at this point to share some of my thoughts about AI in Africa. (And I hope to not follow any advice from Binyavanga Wainaina in his essay How to Write About Africa).

If we have a look on AI on different continents and we compare the situation, we can see three challenges:

1. A bias in data sets for machine learning
2. The multiplied bias of Wikipedia through Artificial Intelligence
3. The influence of European Union legislation on the rest of the world

The bias in data sets for machine learning

Artificial Intelligence is learning with digital data sets. A lot of data is needed to make AI able and ready to execute whatever we want it to do. If AI should compose music for example we need to feed it with a lot of digital music to let AI learn how to compose.


Archiving in the Western World during the last centuries was based on the written word and this written word was stored in archives and libraries. When a library burnt down, the information was gone. With digitalization the different institutions started to convert books into digital files to make them safe but also ready to be used in the digital world. These digital files allow Artificial Intelligence to learn and to work.


The archiving system in Africa follows a different idea. The preservation of knowledge on the African continent in some communities is largely based on orality. Some information in earlier times was not written down but was repeated from mouth to mouth and ear to ear in order not to be forgotten. Most information was independent of any material, even if a library could be destroyed because the knowledge was carried in a lot of different bodies. That’s why the Ivorian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ famously said: “Whenever an elder dies, a library burns down.”    

This completely different information system from the one in the Western World didn’t only create libraries and archives but words that are fluid and spoken. Once spoken they fade away, are gone and are carried inside of everyone who heard the story of the griot. Unfortunately a lot of these voices haven’t been recorded and therefore can’t be digitized. This leads to the situation that there is not the same amount of data sets coming from the African Continent as from from Europe which results in a huge bias in available data sets AI can learn from.

The multiplied bias of Wikipedia through Artificial Intelligence

Wikipedia is the world’s biggest and most used encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is per definition “a book or set of books giving information on many subjects or on many aspects of one subject and typically arranged alphabetically” (Oxford Languages). Wikipedia follows the Western concept of the encyclopedia storing knowledge digitally and is ruled by notability guidelines.


Who or what is notable or not notable to be written about is decided by the Wikipedia community. Sounds like a very democratic approach, the only problem is that the Wikipedia community is mostly white and male. My first Wikipedia Article was marked for speedy deletion after twenty minutes and finally deleted due to notability reasons. Thousands of articles that have been written in the Global South have been treated the same.

The problem for a lot of content coming from the Global South is that the deciding community can’t evaluate the notability of content from another culture in an appropriate way.

In addition to that a lot of Wikipedia articles are written from a Western perspective by Western Wikipedians. AI makes the whole situation worse because of virtual assistant technology like Alexa from Amazon and Siri from Apple. These assistants use Wikipedia articles to answer knowledge questions they are asked. When doing so they spread Wikipedia’s bias into millions of living rooms and households all over the world.

The influence of European Union legislation in relationship to data on the rest of the world

AI is a little bit like dynamite: you can use it for fireworks and to create wonderful colours in the sky but also for making bombs that kill people. AI can do a lot of good but also evil. In the Summer School AI and Ethics organized by the Goethe-Institut in September of this year Linda Bonyo from the Lawyers Hub in Kenia was speaking about Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Act and its Possible Effect on Africa (Summer School – AI and Ethics). I quote Linda here:

In April of 2021, the European Commission submitted its proposal for a European Union regulatory framework on artificial intelligence (AI) in order to improve the functioning of the internal market by outlining a uniform legal framework to develop, market and use AI in conformity with Union values. The proposed Artificial Intelligence Act represents the first attempt globally for horizontal regulation of AI and its extraterritorial application means that it will have a range of implications for the development of AI regulation across the globe. Upon taking effect, which experts indicate could occur at the beginning of 2023, it will have a broad impact on the use of AI and machine learning for citizens and companies around the world.[1]Woodie, A., 2022. Europe’s AI Act Would Regulate Tech Globally. [online] Its provisions having extraterritorial impact will affect the development and deployment of many AI systems around the world and further inspire similar legislative efforts.[2]Engler, A., 2022. The EU AI Act will have global impact, but a limited Brussels Effect. [online] Brookings. Like the GDPR before it, the Act could become a global standard by which varied jurisdictions determine the extent of AI’s positive or negative effect on them. It therefore forces policymakers and stakeholders to consider, like in data privacy, what the international repercussions of the Act will be (the de facto Brussels effect); and the extent to which it unilaterally impacts international rulemaking (the de jure Brussels effect).[3]Engler, A., 2022. The EU AI Act will have global impact, but a limited Brussels Effect.[4][online] Brookings  The proposed Act has been lauded for its probable benefits but also bears its disadvantages which could affect not only EU Member States, but also non-EU jurisdictions including the African continent.

At this point we are back to the dynamite: AI can create a lot of good but also can be evil and I think all African countries need to have a closer look at the AI Act in light of the advantages and the disadvantages and the effect it may have on the African continent.

And what are we going to do with all these insights and challenges now?

I think first of all we should raise awareness about the different topics in the Global North and in the Global South. In the upcoming project AI TO AMPLIFY the Goethe-Institut would like to reflect on the three above mentioned challenges. The project will start in March 2023 and will bring creators of AI applications of the Global North and South together to get information, to be sensitized to new forms of mentorship and to then create applications together that find a solution to the different challenges. Be part of the movement!

Editor’s note: Projects like the Gesellschaft für Informatik (German Informatics Society) / GI’s AI and Ethics Summer School take an interdisciplinary approach to look at different perspectives from civil society and experts to engage with the various questions posed by the development of AI. Furthermore, the European Union’s (EU) AI Act (AIA) aims to regulate AI going forward in the region which will have tremendous legislative and other effects globally and more importantly the global south and may inadvertently reinforce bias and benefit the west. Hence it is imperative for Africa to engage with these processes now. 

All photographs were captured by the author at the AI and Ethics Summer School, Goethe Institute, September 2022.

Notes
1. ↑ Woodie, A., 2022. Europe’s AI Act Would Regulate Tech Globally. [online]
2. ↑ Engler, A., 2022. The EU AI Act will have global impact, but a limited Brussels Effect. [online] Brookings.
3. ↑ Engler, A., 2022.
4. ↑ [online] Brookings
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