AI colonialism: South African experts argue that Artificial Intelligence is repeating patterns of apartheid history
Thami Nkosi points to the tell-tale black box atop a utility pole on a street once home to two Nobel Peace Prize laureates: South Africa’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela, and the anti-apartheid activist and theologian Desmond Tutu. It always happens this way, Nkosi says. First the fibre; then the...
New report details how Facebook is grappling with spectre of Russia’s half-truths and support for coups in Africa
Facebook is struggling to contain pro-Russian and anti-western posts that are contributing to political instability in West Africa, investigators and analysts have said. The platform, which has expanded rapidly across the continent in recent years, has made significant investment in content moderation, but still faces enormous challenges in curbing deliberate...
New study shows highly creative people like visual artists and architects have ‘unique brain connectivity’
The latest research into creativity compares the brain function of exceptionally creative visual artists and scientists with a highly educated group. Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan participants’ brains while they performed tasks that tested creative thinking. The researchers found that the brains of exceptionally creative people...
Moving target: Rather than Nigerian police investigate crimes digitally, they profile young men for torture and extortion
In Nigeria, the meaning of “tech” is rapidly changing. In the last year, data centres have been spreading all across Africa. In response, Lagos-founded MainOne – the largest ISP and data centre operator in West Africa – was acquired by Equinix for $320 million in 2021, with the hopes of...
Cybercrime: Why international institutions are shunning internet traffic from Nigeria as scepticism on financial instruments grows
In November 2021, Oluwaseun Medayedupin was arrested by the Nigerian police in Lagos. An investigation found that he had been pursuing “disgruntled employees” from American companies and pushing them to release ransomware on internal enterprise servers, offering a percentage of the cut if they agreed to collaborate in the attack....
Inside Ukraine-Russia cyber warfare: Information hacking and leaking is ‘weaponised’ to unhinge the enemy
Names, birthdays, passport numbers, job titles – the personal information goes on for pages and looks like any typical data breach. But this data set is very different. It allegedly contains the personal information of 1,600 Russian troops who served in Bucha, a Ukrainian city devastated during Russia’s war and...
‘At the moment we need to recognise that climate crisis in Eastern Africa is actually the new normal’
The current stretch of failed rains in the Horn of Africa has hit a region that had barely begun to recover from the 2016-2017 drought. With no pause to enable pasture and water points to regenerate, estimated 20 million people’s ability to cope has been stripped away. In southern Ethiopia,...
Alarm bells in Horn of Africa are tolling about unprecedented drought with some 20m people at risk of famine
Already struggling after three seasons of failed rains, farmers and pastoralists in the Horn of Africa are facing an unprecedented fourth drought – a catastrophe that will tip more than 20 million people into extreme hunger and, for some, possibly starvation. Rains were expected across the region in March or...
To reclaim ‘soil justice’ Diné Nation in US taxed junk food and used proceeds to fund community wellness
In 2014, Denisa Livingston, a Navajo tribal member, public health expert and organiser with Diné Community Advocacy Alliance (DCAA) and other members of her organisation successfully lobbied the Navajo tribal government to pass the Healthy Diné Nation Act, which imposed a two per cent tax on junk food – the...
From soil justice to social justice: How neglected Indigenous communities in US are using land to fight racism
A half-hour drive south of Gallup, New Mexico, the elevation rises and the sprawling desert turns to a hilly, mint green landscape covered in piñon trees and fields of wild sage – staple plants in Navajo traditional medicine and spirituality. Unlike many Native American tribes forced to resettle permanently in...
