Reposted by NanjiraKetan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 22/11/2025Regret to report that there has been another good linkedin post 192438751
Reposted by NanjiraShannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 31/10/2025If you just banked that coffee money every week and denied yourself every other instance of life’s gastronomic pleasures, however small and ordinary, you could save enough to make the down payment on that starter house in [checks notes] five hundred and seventy three years 201253361
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 29/10/2025‘Brussels Effect’, ‘Beijing Effect’, ‘Delhi Effect’ - all these ‘effects’ are playing out vividly on the African continent, presenting a unique lens through which to analyse the (de)merits of each approach developmentekko.substack.com/p/glocalizin...developmentekko.substack.comGlocalizing tech regulationA view of the EU’s ‘Brussels Effect’ from Africa 123
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 28/08/2025"Africa doesn’t lack opportunities, but it does lack patience for fundamentals. The problem with these overrated businesses isn’t that they’re useless; it’s that they’ve been sold as shortcuts to wealth" weetracker.com/2025/08/18/o... ht @nanjira.bsky.socialweetracker.com8 Overrated Business Trends in Africa (That Aren’t What They Seem)These are the businesses that attract attention, Instagram posts, or even investor money, but rarely deliver long-term value. 001
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 21/08/2025"Policy isn’t a more secure or better compensated branch of academia. Stacking up publication credits doesn’t come with any rewards" www.chalmermagne.com/p/death-by-a... ht @nanjira.bsky.socialchalmermagne.comDeath by a thousand roundtablesMost policy work is pointless. It doesn’t need to be. 021
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 23/07/2025“If the future hasn’t changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?” www.publicbooks.org/no-future-a-...publicbooks.org“No Future”: A Lexicon - Public BooksIf the future hasn’t changed in the past, how could it possibly change now? 010
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 16/07/2025Instead of asking: “How can AI make selection faster?” We should ask: “How can AI help us find those we’d otherwise miss?” www.linkedin.com/posts/paulag...linkedin.comA worrying signal for the future of #Ai in #humanitarian aid in this article by GiveDirectly. | Paula Gil BaizanA worrying signal for the future of #Ai in #humanitarian aid in this article by GiveDirectly. Targeting and selection are the holy grail of humanitarian innovation - get it wrong and your whole progr... 001
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 31/05/2025I am so, so tired, of the term 'potential'. It has been used endlessly to speak about Africa, her youth demographic and to animate poor policy postures. So, when a chance presented itself to pen a (yet another) polemic, I did. developmentekko.substack.com/p/africas-yo...developmentekko.substack.comAfrica’s youth potential: A policy mirageA guest post by Nanjira Sambuli 020
Reposted by NanjiraRachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 21/05/2025We're getting used to cyber attacks that cause massive service outages, assuming every unknown number is a scam, not being able to tell what's real from a deep fake. We're walking through a digital junkyard in which nothing really does what it's meant to do, but sure, AI can make Jesus ride a prawn 17728
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 09/05/2025"Refrains like youth being leaders of tomorrow never specify when tomorrow is. In the eyes of many of the continent’s young and not-so-young, tomorrow never comes, not in time at least" 001
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 09/05/2025The last two decades of Africa potential discourse have already taught us that entrepreneurship cannot per se overcome poor public policy. It is especially fallacious to expect young people to magically leapfrog these entrenched complexities developmentekko.substack.com/p/africas-yo...developmentekko.substack.comAfrica’s youth potential: A policy mirageA guest post by Nanjira Sambuli 122
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 06/05/2025💡 “…a theory of amnesia in the face of innovation: when apparent technological innovations occasion the disregard of preexisting cultural, legal, and infrastructural norms.” /1 110
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 05/05/2025“…calls for sovereignty cannot be separated from the history of aid and the role of NGOs on the continent. This is not just a moment of budget cuts. /1 100
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 04/05/2025“‘#Wakandification’: the process through which Africa *as a product* is reimagined to serve the interests of representation, nation, and capital[…] /1 100
Reposted by NanjiraKen Opalo @kopalo.bsky.social · 24/04/2025Policy extraversion always amounts to playing a rigged game. Davos founder accused of manipulating World Economic Forum research. on.ft.com/3GAaWlMon.ft.comDavos founder accused of manipulating World Economic Forum researchKlaus Schwab denies whistleblower claims and says he is the victim of ‘character assassination’ 164
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 24/04/2025“Until the past two decades or so, political theorists assumed that political theory happens in only treatises: written books with systematic, logical arguments. /1 100
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 23/04/2025The ways that AI disrupts livelihoods in Africa are bound to be different than the West developmentekko.substack.com/p/tech-givet... ht @nanjira.bsky.socialdevelopmentekko.substack.comTech giveth, tech taketh awayThe rise and fall of online writing livelihoods in Nairobi 031
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 22/04/2025“Today, it’s increasingly clear that it’s the tech oligarchs — not their algorithmically-steered platforms—who present the greater danger./1 131
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 30/03/2025“The failure to recognize that the United States was born out of rebellion against oligarchy, not just monarchy, has long helped preserve oligarchic influence in the country.” foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/25/d...foreignpolicy.comThe Deep Roots of OligarchyPrivate contracting is in the DNA of the modern state. 051
Reposted by NanjiraNanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 04/12/2024« …the market-obsessed language of commercial solutions is almost comically inadequate to the enormity of the challenge. Neoliberalism has no regenerative power in it: it can’t cure itself, much less the world. » 😮💨 www.publicbooks.org/hopelessness...publicbooks.org“Hopelessness Makes Possible a New Hope”Though it’s more than a hundred miles from the coast, during the early evening of October 29, 2012, my apartment in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had the salty ... 011
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 12/03/2025Digital 'nature' IDs. Quantifying natural ecosystems... Rather bleak to quantify the qualitative. But such is the age we are living in. 😮💨 www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/t...project-syndicate.orgNature Needs Its Own ID | by Midori Paxton - Project SyndicateMidori Paxton shows how digital tools can drive a data-driven approach to protecting our planet’s environmental health. 010
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 03/03/2025What I’ve found over time is: what is practical, is not necessarily what is desirable by the various stakeholders commanding “authority” over Africa’s digital development landscape, writ large. The technological is political… 014
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 03/03/2025DPIs in Africa: @nanjira.bsky.social et al. call for what has proven elusive to most #globaldev orgs: assume no tabula rasa, take into account political economy & tap into local talent carnegieendowment.org/research/202...carnegieendowment.orgDigital Public Infrastructure: A Practical Approach for AfricaDigital public infrastructure (DPI) has the potential to support Africa’s digital transformation. However, for this to happen, there are crucial baselines that must be considered on the continent, inc... 044
Reposted by NanjiraDr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 27/02/2025"AI technology appears to outperform humans. But a closer look reveals that these games are rigged. The competitions do not actually ask machines to perform human tasks; it’s more accurate to say that they ask humans to behave in machine-like ways as they perform lifeless simulacra of human tasks." 224077
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 27/02/2025If African governments do not invest in building the infrastructure needed to leverage AI, the “AI Messiahs” who sing “AI will solve all of Africa’s problems” will continue to shape the future of AI in Africa www.lcfi.ac.uk/news-events/...lcfi.ac.ukThe Paradox of Africa’s Autonomy in Shaping its AI Future - LCFIThis blog was written by Kofi Yeboah, a former CFI Visitor. In it, Kofi contends that the notion of Africa making significant progress and controlling its own AI future is overly optimistic. Instead, ... 112
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 26/02/2025What if, in the quest to change our food systems, rather than attempting big “technological” leaps alone, we paved the path there, perhaps a little more slowly, but together, one “low-tech, common-sense improvement” at a time? publicbooks.org/the-low-tech... ht @nanjira.bsky.socialpublicbooks.orgThe Low-Tech Side of Agri-Food Innovation - Public BooksIs “low-tech” a more sustainable alternative to moving fast and breaking things? Or just a new iteration of the neoliberal fantasy? 111
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 21/02/2025Oh man, been reading a lot of his work lately. May he R.I.P.! 000
Reposted by NanjiraDr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 21/02/2025they are openly advocating for the use of physiognomy in recruitment make it stop 2129974
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 03/02/2025"...in an old recording of the Apollo 8 mission... astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders [are heard] reading the first chapter of Genesis as they orbited the moon. “Genesis?” ... /1 100
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 02/02/2025“How did colonialism succeed in removing the element of Ubuntu from African ecology? Why is it thar the current understanding of Ubuntu negates the tranquil relationship humans ought to be having with nature?” 🔥🔥🔥 www.researchgate.net/publication/...researchgate.net(PDF) Ubuntu is Not Only about the Human! An Analysis of the Role of African Philosophy and Ethics in Environment ManagementPDF | A Marxist discourse on metabolic rift is used to examine the alienation of Africans from their environment and religious connections by capitalism... | Find, read and cite all the research you n... 152
Reposted by NanjiraDr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 24/01/2025it’s mad to me how big tech and AI companies dumps their trash into the world and it is up to everyone else (academics, civil society, educators, regulators, etc) to deal with it…. to assess the merit/usefulness, clean up their mess, and come up with alternatives 1433992
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 15/01/2025"The costs for poorer nations to catch up in the AI race are too much. Public spending may be diverted from critical services such as education and health care" foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/17/a... ht @nanjira.bsky.socialforeignpolicy.comAI Is Bad News for the Global SouthThe coming wave of technology is set to worsen global inequality. 202
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 20/01/2025Valuation is a “political technology.” Neither a private affair nor an objective lens, it is a tool that produces inequalities of wealth, shapes how property is owned, and determines where investments are made www.bostonreview.net/articles/the... ht @nanjira.bsky.socialbostonreview.netThe Politics of Price - Boston ReviewHow accounting protocols undermine public goals—from decolonization to climate action. 012
Reposted by NanjiraDr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 18/01/2025'critique is service' is the hill I'm going to die on 1582
Reposted by NanjiraMargaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 17/01/2025Virtually no expert in AI (AFAIK) thinks that what Sam is aiming for is a positive thing beneficial for society; many have clearly explained why it’s awful. 77316
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 14/01/20252025 is the year I get to say, “Thanks for coming to my TED talk”. 😊 130
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 04/01/2025“…efforts to debias AI never seem to consider the bias of capital, i.e., the interests of shareholders over workers, accumulation over distribution, and private exchange-value over social use-value.” 💯 www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...frontiersin.orgFrontiers | Politics by Automatic Means? A Critique of Artificial Intelligence Ethics at WorkCalls for “ethical Artificial Intelligence” are legion, with a recent proliferation of government and industry guidelines attempting to establish ethical rul... 001
Reposted by NanjiraSeye Abimbola @seyeabimbola.bsky.social · 18/11/2024I'm happy to announce that my book, "The Foreign Gaze: Essays on Global Health", is now out! You can order the print copy and download the e-copy (open access) here: www.editions.ird.fr/produit/728/... The book comes with a playlist for your listening pleasure: open.spotify.com/playlist/5K5... 23254118
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 02/01/2025“Western “Man” has been over-represented, at the expense of the thingification of “others.” (Aimé Césaire) And so, in order to unsettle the coloniality of power, we will need to redescribe what it means to be human. (Sylvia Wynter) /1 162
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 11/12/2024…development planning (is) not only a problem to the extent that it failed; it (is) a problem even when it succeed(s), because it so strongly set the terms for how people in poor countries could live./1 132
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 07/12/2024“The entire (development) sector runs on the blood, sweat, tears, and passion of women, especially young women, until it burns them out and there isn't often a solid look at the turnover issues on a systemic level. /1 110
Reposted by Nanjiragquaggiotto.bsky.social @gquaggiotto.bsky.social · 06/12/2024Conventional economic development focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation & growth, and the transformation of informal economies to fill in what is perceived to be absent. In so doing, these interventions undermine existing e social-welfare systems ssir.org/articles/ent...ssir.orgStrengthening Africa’s Urban Informal Economies (SSIR)Conventional needs-based development policies can be harmful to informal businesses. Instead, development professionals must embrace an asset-based approach, identifying how existing collective soluti... 021
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 06/12/2024"People often complain about demagogues, or wish that politicians might be more sincere. But to do good, politicians (paradoxically) must be hypocrites – or actors." 🤔 📖 www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/dem...cambridgebookshop.co.ukDemocracy Theatre & PerformanceDemocracy, argues David Wiles, is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments of ancient and modern democracy, demonstrating how ... 000
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 04/12/2024« …the market-obsessed language of commercial solutions is almost comically inadequate to the enormity of the challenge. Neoliberalism has no regenerative power in it: it can’t cure itself, much less the world. » 😮💨 www.publicbooks.org/hopelessness...publicbooks.org“Hopelessness Makes Possible a New Hope”Though it’s more than a hundred miles from the coast, during the early evening of October 29, 2012, my apartment in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had the salty ... 011
Nanjira @nanjira.bsky.social · 29/11/2024Didn’t have going on VPN to access this app (in Germany at least) on my bingo card! The DSA hammer has come down hard on Bluesky, it seems. (But also found out it was trying to automatically access location data on the selected images to which I grant it access 😮💨)media.tenor.comthe joker is leaning against a brick wall and saying yikes !ALT: the joker is leaning against a brick wall and saying yikes ! 010
Reposted by NanjiraRowenna. 2 ‘n’s. Ro-WEN-na. @missiggeek.bsky.social · 27/11/2024Data is *contrived* not collected. Pro tip: any time you encounter references to ‘collection’ of data; treat it as a warning flag and a cue to dig deeper. What data? Why this? What for? Who - if anyone at all - is responsible? 2639
Reposted by NanjiraRowenna. 2 ‘n’s. Ro-WEN-na. @missiggeek.bsky.social · 27/11/2024Data is never ‘collected’, it is only *generated*. This isn’t merely a pedantic semantic gripe; by misrepresenting ‘data’ as something that exists in nature & has only to be scooped up, evasion of accountability for data harms has already begun Data doesn’t exist until someone constructs it 18538141
Reposted by NanjiraRowenna. 2 ‘n’s. Ro-WEN-na. @missiggeek.bsky.social · 27/11/2024Data is not ‘collected’, it is constructed, imposed, insinuated, attributed, replicated. To speak of ‘collecting’ data is to conceal the design choices, motives and power dynamics that determine the data’s shape and purpose. 27312
