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AI technology is capturing the African imaginations as a gateway to progress and prosperity. There is a growing interest in AI by different actors across the continent including scientists, researchers, humanitarian and aid organizations, academic institutions, tech start-ups, and media organizations. Several African states are looking to adopt AI technology to capture economic growth and development opportunities. On the other hand, African researchers highlight the gap in regulatory frameworks and policies that govern the development of AI in the continent. They argue that this could lead to AI technology exacerbating problems of inequalities and injustice in the continent. However, most of the literature on AI ethics is biased toward Euro-American perspectives and lack the understanding of how AI development is apprehended in the Global South, and particularly Africa. Drawing on the case study of the first African Master's in Machine Intelligence program, this paper argues for looking beyond the question of ethics in AI and examining AI governance issues through the analytical lens of the raciality of computing and the political economy of technoscience to understand AI development in Africa. By doing so, this paper seeks a different theorization for AI ethics from the South that is based on lived experiences of those in the margins and avoids the framings of technological futures that simplistically pathologize or celebrate Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Agriculture productivity in Africa and most developing countries are far from optimum. • Digitalization is a potential game changer for agricultural productivity. • Sensors, IoT, AI, and smartphones are key for Africa's agricultural digitalization. • Digitalization could strengthen African food security and globally. • Infrastructure and policy challenges digitalization on the continent. Africa's agriculture has over time, improved and expanded in scale and efficiency, yet its productivity is far from its optimum, and the majority of the continent is still food insecure. To harness its potential for a drastic increase to avoid continued mass hunger and support the bioeconomy's growth, farm productivity in Africa must be retooled. This paper examines the role of digitalization as a potential game changer and an impetus for a transformational future for large-scale and smallholder farming and livelihoods through driving technological and methodological innovation and automation. Digitalization is seen here as consisting of four supporting elements: sensors (in situ or remote), wireless transmission of data, artificial intelligence (AI), and transmission of diagnoses and or recommendations to the end user. In addition to strengthening food security on the continent and globally and the ensuing economic benefits, other cross-cutting effects are presented. These include risk management through early warning systems for natural disasters, improved decision-making with big data, reduction in rural-urban migration by the attraction of youth towards agriculture, and the improvement in environmental stewardship and building climate resilience. Challenges to realizing the benefits of digitalization, including lack of infrastructure and human resource expertise and the role of public-private partnerships in developing solutions, are also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased access to smartphones in Africa and elsewhere in the global south has opened new markets and new areas for surveillance/platform capitalism/data colonialism to operate. This article attends to the socio-technical practices of Transsion, the Chinese maker of Africa's top selling smartphones, and through these showcases how essential hardware are to the global data economy. Working from a mix of data, including translocal fieldwork in Shenzhen, Accra, Addis Ababa, and a close reading of Transsion products and artifacts alongside business practices, the article shows how the company's prioritizing of Black African consumer needs sustains its competitive position and how its constellation of hardware and apps are integral to its success in routine experimentation of artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and other emerging areas of computation. Ultimately, the argument is that consumer hardware such as low-cost smartphones are critical to the datafication of the everyday in the global south via the bundling of surveillant and extractive software and should be considered sites of power within discourses on the platform era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) provides many opportunities for social and economic empowerment in developing countries. However, when one thinks of Africa, robotics does not spring immediately to mind as the most relevant application of AI, considering that the continent typically has high unemployment and fast-growing populations. Nevertheless, some countries in Africa have embraced robotics on the basis that it has an important role to play in their economic development. In this article, we explore this role and the ways in which Africa can best exploit the opportunities afforded by intelligent automation and robotics. It also highlights strategies to offset the threats posed by global factors, such as premature deindustrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]