Research

Principle Investigator: Dr. Radha Upadhyaya

Project Description:
Across Africa, credit-lending institutions and banks are increasingly turning to digital and mobile phone data to calculate individuals’ risk profiles and provide people previously excluded from the formal banking sector with micro-loans and other financial services. While the use of AI in financial services holds the potential to increase financial inclusion, it also poses numerous ethical challenges.

The project explored the following research questions:
1) How can the regulatory and legal landscape enable users to be better informed and protected at every stage—data collection, lending, repayment, and listing with Credit Reference Bureaus?
2) How to design a financial system that gives credit but doesn’t cause over-indebtedness and supports the real economy?
3) What are the unique needs and vulnerabilities of unbanked populations, whose concerns should guide the ethical use of mobile phone data for automated credit decisions?

Project Description:
The objective of this research was to generate evidence to inform policies that can enhance adoption of AI in Africa as well as to be used, through awareness creation, to demystify narratives and perceptions of the local population and sensitize them on the benefits of AI to the economy.

Principle Investigator: Prof. Donrich Thaldar

Project Description:
The objective of this research was two-fold: first, to assess and clearly delineate the AI normative framework within SA and consider how this aligns with human rights, ethics and international best practice; and secondly, to suggest how any insufficient alignment might be remedied.

Principle Investigator: Dr. Adekemi Omotubora

Project Description:
Using AI-powered health-tech in two African countries, namely, Nigeria and Kenya, as a case study, this research explored the concept of human rights by design (HRsbD) as a governance framework for the development and deployment of good and ethical AI in Africa.

Principle Investigator: Dr. Thompson Chengeta & Dr. Gift Manyatera

Project Description:
In the United Nations (UN) discussions on autonomous weapon systems (AWS), States and scholars have argued that jus in bello should guide deliberations on whether or not AWS are acceptable.

States have taken the position that the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) is the appropriate framework for deliberations on AWS. The scope of application of the CCW is limited to situations of armed conflict where jus in bello is applicable. As a result, the CCW framework maintains the jus ad bellum-jus in bello dichotomy. Given that critical African values such as freedom ethics are largely located in jus ad bellum, and given the potential impact of AWS on jus ad bellum, the research critiques the idea of a strict adherence to the aforementioned dichotomy when States deliberate about acceptability of AWS. The research uses critical theories such as decolonial theory and the theory of situated knowledge to show how certain global legal arrangements results in exclusion of African values and epistemic injustice.

Principle Investigator: Dr. Elefelious Getachew Belay

Project Description:
This research explored the human factors that affect the design and development of AI in Africa, and what technical considerations are relevant for designing and implementing ethical AI in Africa.

Principle Investigator: Dr. Samah Elsayed

Project Description:
This project explored a framework for Urban AI focused on ecological capacity and environmental and social justice as a way of ensuring equitable and ethical distribution of forwarding resources.
The Cairo charter project is being developed via an integrated design research method combining experts and community innovators focused on investigating questions related to the role of Urban AI in enabling cities in Africa not only to be technologically equipped, but also ecologically sustainable, environmentally ethical, and social justice. The findings from this research can be deployed in urban planning projects across Cairo, the continent, and beyond.

Principle Investigator: Dr. Pross Oluka Nagitta

Project Description:
This project focused on the governance of AI procurement in Uganda and Kenya, highlighting public procurements’ gate-keeping role to ethical AI in these two countries.