Africa

Hao, Karen. 2019. “The Future of AI Research Is in Africa.” MIT Technology Review (blog). June 21, 2019.

AO: This MIT Technology Review post describes the machine learning community on the continent and places companies like IBM front and center of these "blossoming" communities. There is an important critical labor and tech training component to be unpacked here. 

The article quotes...Read more

Keynote Presentation at IBM Research Lab. (2014, March 18). [Transcript based on personal recording].

0:02 CTO, IBM Watson We're very glad to be here in Africa. As you know, late last year, we opened our 4th research lab in IBM, here in Africa. And Africa represents to us an incredible, very exciting set of opportunities. And that's for many reasons, okay, not the least of which is the African...Read more

Kitchen, S. 2020. "Bibliography on African Scholarly Publishing." Research Data Share.

On social science knowledge production

Ake, Claude, Social Science as Imperialism: the theory of political development , Ibadan University Press, 1979.

Bank, Leslie, Nico Cloete and Francois van Schalkwyk (eds), Anchored...Read more

Angela Okune, S. Adebowale, E. Gray, A. Mumo, and R. Oniang'o. "Discussion on Open Access (in Africa)," [Transcript], 2020, Research Data Share.

Discussion on Open Access in Africa

March 31, 2020

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM Nairobi

Participants (listed alphabetically):

Friederici, N., Wahome, M., & Graham, M. (2020). Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa: How a Continent Is Escaping Silicon Valley’s Long Shadow. The MIT Press.

AO: This recent Open Access monograph publication by Friederici et al. is particularly relevant for the macro and nano chapters in that they describe Nairobi's technology ecosystem and the entrepreneurs who work...Read more

Attiah, K. (2020, September 22). Opinion | Africa has defied the covid-19 nightmare scenarios. We shouldn’t be surprised. Washington Post.

AO: This article (from September 2020) notes that despite a narrative that heavily circulated early in the global spread of the COVID pandemic that "vulnerable" and "high-risk" places, in Africa for example, were going to be devastated by COVID, it has not in fact played out that...Read more

Bgoya, Walter, and Mary Jay. 2013. “Publishing in Africa from Independence to the Present Day.” African Books Collective. Accessed April 17, 2020.

This piece by Walter Bgoya and Mary Jay details efforts to free indigenous African publishing from "the constraints of the colonial past, the strictures of economic structural adjustment policies, the continuing dominance of multinational publishers (particularly in textbooks

...Read more
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