Afrofeminist Data Futures

Abstract This overview of many years of research, which aims to improve government service-delivery, locates injustices in specific areas of AI development and deployment across Africa. It provides qualitative and quantitative evidence of its claims, as well as recommendations for policy and governance responses. As the authors explain, data collection in African contexts is both the poison and the remedy: colonialist data practices extract data from African regions for the benefit of Western tech companies, and datafication poses significant risks to women and girls’ privacy. However, data—especially Big Data—can improve NGO and governmental responses to issues affecting African women by providing insight into elements of their lives that are difficult to capture through other data collection modalities. This is why, they argue, it is so important to work with feminist methods and theory when creating, processing and interpreting data.