A curation of essays, interviews, talks, op-eds by and/or featuring yours truly. Also, additional roundups for 2020-2023, 2014-2019 and on COVID-19 ).
2024
How Californian and African City Connections Can Build Up Smart City Diplomacy (An essay I contributed to an exploratory series at Carnegie California to accompany the city of Los Angeles’ development of an Africa Trade and Investment Strategy. I make the case for a smart city diplomacy that pairs sub-national diplomacy with two pressing global governance challenges: climate change and the rapid diffusion of digital technologies).
Citizen Experiences with DPI: Kenya’s Digital ID Transition (A brief I co-authored taking a critical look at the technopolitical theatre in which Kenya’s digital ID quest is playing out. We highlight the conditions required for effective digital public infrastructure (DPI) interventions while centering citizen experiences often overlooked in DPI outcomes speak).
On common cyber threat vectors affecting African countries’ digital financial systems (In which I speak to ITWeb Africa, on the sidelines of the IT Web Security Summit 2024, where I delivered a keynote on insights from the CyberFI project I’ve been leading at Carnegie, as well as on South Africa’s prospective leading role on cybersecure digital development on the continent).
When the ‘technological is political.’ The future of AI, for better or worse. (In this two part series by Arete News, I share many words on who’s shaping AI governance, the subjectivity of concepts such as ‘AI for good’, and what regulatory superpowers like the European Union can learn from the global majority’s corpus of wisdom on ‘glocal’ regulation).
The DPI Approach to Digital Identity & Digital Development(In part 1 this ID4Africa2024 panel, I joined colleagues from the Gates Foundation and UNDP in contextualizing waht Digital Public Infrastructure means for Africa’s digitalization journeys, offering a word of caution about narratives and their power to excite, confuse or even deflate and generate resistance/reluctance).
Global governance of digital technologies: A contemporary diplomacy challenge (My Masters dissertation [2021, finally published publicly] addressed the challenge of global governance of digital technologies, advocating for the reform of international institutions to include non-state actors and non-western governments. It explored the growing demand for involvement of non-state actors and considers the role of diplomacy in addressing this task [arguably still relevant today].)
Security and Trust in Africa’s Digital Financial Inclusion Landscape (A culmination of a three year project assessing cybersecurity in Africa’s digital financial services landscape, this co-authored paper draws the links between technical aspects of cybersecurity and resilience with sociocultural determinants of trust, and how those should inform how digital financial inclusion is advanced, especially for the un(der)served).
Female policy experts enabling Africa’s tech landscape (In line with the International Women’s Day 2024 theme — Inspiring Inclusion— I spoke to Connecting Africa about strides and hurdles facing African women in tech (policy), including my own journey in the space)
African countries are caught in the middle in the geopolitical tech debate(In an interview with the Crown Princess Mary Centre (Denmark), I share my take on how Africa is impacted by and impacting tech geopolitics).
The democratisation of information and its influence on culture over time (At the 2024 Culture Summit Abu Dhabi, I shared my take on the impacts of tech on media and culture in a globalized world, including challenging prevailing assumptions of tech diffusion — notably ‘west to rest’)
