168 research outputs found
The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: African Imaginaries of Technoscientific Futures
Imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) have transcended geographies of the Global North and become increasingly entangled with narratives of economic growth, progress, and modernity in Africa. This raises several issues such as the entanglement of AI with global technoscientific capitalism and its impact on the dissemination of AI in Africa. The lack of African perspectives on the development of AI exacerbates concerns of raciality and inclusion in the scientific research, circulation, and adoption of AI. My argument in this dissertation is that innovation in AI, in both its sociotechnical imaginaries and political economies, excludes marginalized countries, nations and communities in ways that not only bar their participation in the reception of AI, but also as being part and parcel of its creation.
Underpinned by decolonial thinking, and perspectives from science and technology studies and African studies, this dissertation looks at how AI is reconfiguring the debate about development and modernization in Africa and the implications for local sociotechnical practices of AI innovation and governance. I examined AI in international development and industry across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, by tracing Canadaâs AI4D Africa program and following AI start-ups at AfriLabs. I used multi-sited case studies and discourse analysis to examine the data collected from interviews, participant observations, and documents.
In the empirical chapters, I first examine how local actors understand the notion of decolonizing AI and show that it has become a sociotechnical imaginary. I then investigate the political economy of AI in Africa and argue that despite Western efforts to integrate the African AI ecosystem globally, the AI epistemic communities in the continent continue to be excluded from dominant AI innovation spaces. Finally, I examine the emergence of a Pan-African AI imaginary and argue that AI governance can be understood as a state-building experiment in post-colonial Africa. The main issue at stake is that the lack of African perspectives in AI leads to negative impacts on innovation and limits the fair distribution of the benefits of AI across nations, countries, and communities, while at the same time excludes globally marginalized epistemic communities from the imagination and creation of AI
Serenity Now! The (Not So) Inclusive Framework and the Multilateral Instrument
The Article demonstrates that the most important initiatives to promote inclusivity within the international tax regime (Country-by-Country Reporting, the Multilateral Instrument, and the Inclusive Framework), based on publicly available data and a variety of indicators, have, at best, done little to increase meaningful participation of non-OECD countries in the regime, and have been disingenuous at worst. This indiÂŹrect methodology was dictated by the opacity of the analyzed efforts and the difficulties of evaluating inclusivity, but the picture it paints is unmistakable. Using Hirschmanâs exit and voice theory, the article conÂŹcludes by explaining why the OECD asked non-member states to join these efforts and why they have nominally joined. Based on this study, it is concluded that the issues that prompted the establishment of incluÂŹsive fora within the international tax regime will not âgo awayâ with such nominal inclusion, and that only meaningful inclusivity has the potential to stabilize the international tax regime
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Citizenship Capabilities and Instant Messaging in Western Kenya: an Intersectional Approach
This doctoral research project contributes to understanding the role of WhatsAppâthe most used social media platform in Kenyaâin citizen engagement processes. Paying particular attention to inequalities, power dynamics, and the need to account for the postcolonial context of Kenya, the project develops a theoretical framework that combines the Capability Approach (CA) and critical citizenship studies to conceptualise citizen engagement as relational and multi-layered citizenship. It draws on the theory of affordances to understand WhatsApp as an artefact and uses intersectional feminism alongside the CA to study the interaction between WhatsApp and the citizenship capabilities. The projectâs methodology follows a situated knowledges approach that focuses on discourse and a digital ethnography that encompasses multiple methods across offline and online spaces. Based on research with young people in the county of Busia, this thesis first identifies a set of citizenship capabilities including mattering, belonging and respect, in addition to what may be considered more obvious citizenship capabilities such as participating in decision-making or exercising rights. Second, in addition to processes that serve as conversion factors that help to âactivateâ citizenship, the research also highlights the role of performative citizenship practices as conversion processes in themselves. Third, the study identifies a set of WhatsApp affordances which interact with these conversion processes and can help to activate or enact citizenship. These affordances emphasise WhatsAppâs social, discursive and agentic possibilities among private and relevant groups of people, helping to build and perform citizenship as an inwards and intimate process before enacting it in the public sphere. Finally, the thesis argues that the meanings attached to the capabilities as well as the conversion factors vary depending on where people are situated across axes of oppression. So do WhatsAppâs affordances. Relying on instant messagingâs affordances without taking these inequalities into account can further exclude people from valued capabilities
International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022
This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate
Disasters Preparedness and Emergency Response: Prevention, Surveillance and Mitigation Planning
This Special Issue welcomes research papers on new approaches that have been applied or are under development to improve preparedness and emergency response. We especially encourage the submission of inter-disciplinary and crosscutting research. We also encourage the submission of manuscripts that focus on various types of disasters, disaster and emergency research, and on policy or management solutions at multiple scales
World Development Report 2022
This new World Development Report focuses on the interrelated economic risks that households, businesses, financial institutions, and governments worldwide are facing as a consequence of the COVID-19 crisis. The Report offers new insights from research on the
interconnectedness of balance sheets and the potential spillover effects across sectors. It
also offers policy recommendations based on these insights. Specifically, it addresses the
question of how to reduce the financial risks stemming from the extraordinary policies
adopted in response to the COVID-19 crisis while supporting an equitable recovery.
The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has already led to millions of deaths, job losses,
business failures, and school closings, triggering the most encompassing economic crisis
in almost a century. Poverty rates have soared and inequality has widened both across
and within countries. Disadvantaged groups that had limited financial resilience to begin
with and workers with lower levels of educationâespecially younger ones and womenâ
have been disproportionately affected.
The response by governments has included a combination of cash transfers to households,
credit guarantees for firms, easier liquidity conditions, repayment grace periods for much of
the private sector, and accounting and regulatory forbearance for many financial institutions. Although these actions have helped to partially mitigate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic, they have also resulted in elevated risks, including public overindebtedness, increased financial fragility, and a general erosion in transparency. Emerging
economies have been left with very limited fiscal space, and they will be made even more
vulnerable by the impending normalization of monetary policy in advanced economies.
This Report highlights several priority areas for action.
First is the need for early detection of significant financial risks. Because the balance
sheets of households, firms, financial sector institutions, and governments are tightly
interrelated, risks may be hidden. The share of nonperforming loans has generally
remained below what was feared at the beginning of the crisis. But this could be due to
forbearance policies that delayed debt repayments and relaxed accounting standards.
Firm surveys in emerging economies reveal that many businesses expect to be in payment
arrears in the coming months, and so private debt could suddenly become public debt, as
in many past crises.
The interdependence of economic policies across countries matters as well. Public debt
has reached unprecedented levels. As monetary policy tightens in advanced economies,
interest rates will need to increase in emerging economies as well, and their currencies
will likely depreciate. Higher interest rates make debt service more expensive, reinforcing the trend of recent years, and weaker currencies make debt service more burdensome
relative to the size of the economy. Liquidity problems could suddenly morph into solvency
problems
Routledge Handbook of Public Policy in Africa
This Handbook provides an authoritative and foundational disciplinary overview of African Public Policy and a comprehensive examination of the practicalities of policy analysis, policymaking processes, implementation, and administration in Africa today. The book assembles a multidisciplinary team of distinguished and upcoming Africanist scholars, practitioners, researchers and policy experts working inside and outside Africa to analyse the historical and emerging policy issues in 21st-century Africa. While mostly attentive to comparative public policy in Africa, this book attempts to address some of the following pertinent questions: ⢠How can public policy be understood and taught in Africa? ⢠How does policymaking occur in unstable political contexts, or in states under pressure? ⢠Has the democratisation of governing systems improved policy processes in Africa? ⢠How have recent transformations, such as technological proliferation in Africa, impacted public policy processes? ⢠What are the underlying challenges and potential policy paths for Africa going forward? The contributions examine an interplay of prevailing institutional, political, structural challenges and opportunities for policy effectiveness to discern striking commonalities and trajectories across different African states. This is a valuable resource for practitioners, politicians, researchers, university students, and academics interested in studying and understanding how African countries are governed
The 7th Annual Conference on "Relooking at Development, Value for Money and Public Service Delivery"
The fire services are a salient contestation which are often overlooked by the Social Science scholars. The Department of Cooperative Governance has ultimately promulgated a White Paper on fire services in May 2020. This study therefore aims to review and examine the legislation with a purpose of traversing the intricacies entrenched within the fire landscape. The review and analysis of policies have the potential to analyse the realities and the misnomer which are a perfect avenue to create dialogue. The theoretical framework of manipulation and elitism are employed for attributing meaning towards the study perspectives for practicality and simplicity. The paper follows a systematic procedure of reviewing documents, and policies to elicit information as a methodology adopted for the study. Gaps identified in the White Paper are uncovered and fully discussed. The content was studied, contextualised, and synthesised intellectually to derive meaning on all the aspects. It is the contention of this paper to attribute meaning to policy improvement in the fire services with a consequential contribution to the world of science for sustainable development.University of South AfricaDevelopment Studie
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