If 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

‘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...

"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.social

"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.social

“If the future hasn’t changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?” www.publicbooks.org/no-future-a-...

Instead 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...

I 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...

We'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

"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"

The 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...

💡 “…a theory of amnesia in the face of innovation: when apparent technological innovations occasion the disregard of preexisting cultural, legal, and infrastructural norms.” /1

“…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

“‘#Wakandification’: the process through which Africa *as a product* is reimagined to serve the interests of representation, nation, and capital[…] /1

Policy extraversion always amounts to playing a rigged game. Davos founder accused of manipulating World Economic Forum research. on.ft.com/3GAaWlM

“Until the past two decades or so, political theorists assumed that political theory happens in only treatises: written books with systematic, logical arguments. /1

The ways that AI disrupts livelihoods in Africa are bound to be different than the West developmentekko.substack.com/p/tech-givet... ht @nanjira.bsky.social

“Today, it’s increasingly clear that it’s the tech oligarchs — not their algorithmically-steered platforms—who present the greater danger./1

“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...

« …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...

Digital '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...

What 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…

DPIs 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...

"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."

@kofiemeritus.bsky.social nails it!

If 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/...

What 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.social

Oh man, been reading a lot of his work lately. May he R.I.P.!

they are openly advocating for the use of physiognomy in recruitment make it stop

"...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

“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/...

it’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

"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.social

Valuation 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.social

'critique is service' is the hill I'm going to die on

Virtually 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.

2025 is the year I get to say, “Thanks for coming to my TED talk”. 😊

“…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...

I'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...

“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

…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

“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

Conventional 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...

"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...

« …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...

Didn’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 😮‍💨)

Data 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?

Data 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

Data 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.

Now have two complete starter packs for "Africa News, Policy, Business, Econ & History". Starting a thread of all of my Africa starter packs, including more specific ones like, country/region, journalists, academics, media orgs, etc. Here's the first Africa starter pack: go.bsky.app/BNYnWSJ