Joy Buolamwini, an AI researcher and one of the event's panelists, described it as the most enriching conversation on AI she had attended. She warned of what she calls the "X-coded" individual — a person harmed, discriminated against, or exploited through AI systems — and argued that no one is immune. She cited explicit deepfakes targeting women and girls, biased facial recognition systems reinforcing racial injustice, and the replication of public figures' likenesses without consent as concrete examples of harm already occurring.
Buolamwini also cautioned against what she described as a "second wave of data colonialism," in which African digital content and behavioral data are extracted and used to train AI systems that benefit foreign corporations, while local communities see little in return. She called on African governments to protect their digital resources and ensure African voices are represented in AI development not just as subjects of training data, but as designers and decision-makers.
Benjamin Rosman, a professor of computer science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, pointed to a structural challenge: Africa's more than 2,000 languages include many that are "low-resource," meaning insufficient data exists to train AI systems that can understand or generate them effectively. He emphasized that the question of who designs AI, and whose values are embedded in it, is not merely technical but deeply political.
Anastancia Makunu approached the discussion through the lens of Ubuntu, the African philosophy expressed as "I am because we are," arguing that AI-generated voices, bots, and virtual interactions risk eroding the face-to-face relationships and communal storytelling central to many African societies. She also raised concerns about surveillance, algorithmic bias in facial recognition, and the environmental strain of data centers built in vulnerable communities.
Despite the warnings, speakers acknowledged AI's genuine potential on the continent. Tools like FarmerLine, an African-built platform that assists smallholder farmers in local languages, were cited as examples of what becomes possible when AI is designed with African contexts in mind rather than adapted from elsewhere.
This analysis is based on reporting from Vatican News.
Image courtesy of Caleb Miller.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
