Nanjira
@nanjira.bsky.social
đ€ 1054
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A dark cloud in a blue sky. www.nanjira.com
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Nanjira
Shannon Vallor
11 days ago
If you just banked that coffee money every week and denied yourself every other instance of lifeâs 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
add a skeleton here at some point
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Nanjira
14 days ago
âBrussels Effectâ, âBeijing Effectâ, âDelhi Effectâ - all these âeffectsâ 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...
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Glocalizing tech regulation
A view of the EUâs âBrussels Effectâ from Africa
https://developmentekko.substack.com/p/glocalizing-tech-regulation
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Nanjira
3 months ago
"Africa doesnât lack opportunities, but it does lack patience for fundamentals. The problem with these overrated businesses isnât that theyâre useless; itâs that theyâve been sold as shortcuts to wealth"
weetracker.com/2025/08/18/o...
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@nanjira.bsky.social
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8 Overrated Business Trends in Africa (That Arenât What They Seem)
These are the businesses that attract attention, Instagram posts, or even investor money, but rarely deliver long-term value.
https://weetracker.com/2025/08/18/overrated-business-trends-in-africa/
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Nanjira
3 months ago
"Policy isnât a more secure or better compensated branch of academia. Stacking up publication credits doesnât come with any rewards"
www.chalmermagne.com/p/death-by-a...
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@nanjira.bsky.social
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Death by a thousand roundtables
Most policy work is pointless. It doesnât need to be.
https://www.chalmermagne.com/p/death-by-a-thousand-roundtables
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âIf the future hasnât changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?â
www.publicbooks.org/no-future-a-...
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âNo Futureâ: A Lexicon - Public Books
If the future hasnât changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?
https://www.publicbooks.org/no-future-a-lexicon/
4 months ago
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Nanjira
4 months ago
Instead of asking: âHow can AI make selection faster?â We should ask: âHow can AI help us find those weâd otherwise miss?â
www.linkedin.com/posts/paulag...
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A worrying signal for the future of #Ai in #humanitarian aid in this article by GiveDirectly. | Paula Gil Baizan
A 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...
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulagilbaizan_many-aid-programs-still-rely-on-outdated-activity-7351141214726836224-oxmS/
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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...
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Africaâs youth potential: A policy mirage
A guest post by Nanjira Sambuli
https://developmentekko.substack.com/p/africas-youth-potential-a-policy
5 months ago
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Nanjira
Rachel Coldicutt
6 months ago
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
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Nanjira
6 months ago
"Refrains like youth being leaders of tomorrow never specify when tomorrow is. In the eyes of many of the continentâs young and not-so-young, tomorrow never comes, not in time at least"
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Nanjira
6 months ago
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...
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Africaâs youth potential: A policy mirage
A guest post by Nanjira Sambuli
https://developmentekko.substack.com/p/africas-youth-potential-a-policy
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đĄ ââŠa theory of amnesia in the face of innovation: when apparent technological innovations occasion the disregard of preexisting cultural, legal, and infrastructural norms.â /1
6 months ago
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ââŠcalls 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
6 months ago
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ââ#Wakandificationâ: the process through which Africa *as a product* is reimagined to serve the interests of representation, nation, and capital[âŠ] /1
6 months ago
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Nanjira
Ken Opalo
7 months ago
Policy extraversion always amounts to playing a rigged game. Davos founder accused of manipulating World Economic Forum research.
on.ft.com/3GAaWlM
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Davos founder accused of manipulating World Economic Forum research
Klaus Schwab denies whistleblower claims and says he is the victim of âcharacter assassinationâ
https://on.ft.com/3GAaWlM
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âUntil the past two decades or so, political theorists assumed that political theory happens in only treatises: written books with systematic, logical arguments. /1
7 months ago
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Nanjira
7 months ago
The ways that AI disrupts livelihoods in Africa are bound to be different than the West
developmentekko.substack.com/p/tech-givet...
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@nanjira.bsky.social
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Tech giveth, tech taketh away
The rise and fall of online writing livelihoods in Nairobi
https://developmentekko.substack.com/p/tech-giveth-tech-taketh-away/
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âToday, itâs increasingly clear that itâs the tech oligarchs â not their algorithmically-steered platformsâwho present the greater danger./1
7 months ago
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âThe 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.â
foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/25/d...
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The Deep Roots of Oligarchy
Private contracting is in the DNA of the modern state.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/25/deep-roots-oligarchy-history-corporation/
8 months ago
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Nanjira
« âŠthe market-obsessed language of commercial solutions is almost comically inadequate to the enormity of the challenge. Neoliberalism has no regenerative power in it: it canât cure itself, much less the world. » đźâđš
www.publicbooks.org/hopelessness...
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âHopelessness Makes Possible a New Hopeâ
Though itâs more than a hundred miles from the coast, during the early evening of October 29, 2012, my apartment in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had the salty ...
https://www.publicbooks.org/hopelessness-makes-possible-a-new-hope/
11 months ago
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Digital 'nature' IDs. Quantifying natural ecosystems... Rather bleak to quantify the qualitative. But such is the age we are living in. đźâđš
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/t...
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Nature Needs Its Own ID | by Midori Paxton - Project Syndicate
Midori Paxton shows how digital tools can drive a data-driven approach to protecting our planetâs environmental health.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/transformative-potential-of-digital-nature-id-by-midori-paxton-2025-03
8 months ago
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What Iâve found over time is: what is practical, is not necessarily what is desirable by the various stakeholders commanding âauthorityâ over Africaâs digital development landscape, writ large. The technological is politicalâŠ
add a skeleton here at some point
8 months ago
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Nanjira
8 months ago
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...
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Digital Public Infrastructure: A Practical Approach for Africa
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) has the potential to support Africaâs digital transformation. However, for this to happen, there are crucial baselines that must be considered on the continent, inc...
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/02/digital-public-infrastructure-a-practical-approach-for-africa?lang=en
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Nanjira
Dr Abeba Birhane
9 months ago
"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; itâs more accurate to say that they ask humans to behave in machine-like ways as they perform lifeless simulacra of human tasks."
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@kofiemeritus.bsky.social
nails it!
add a skeleton here at some point
9 months ago
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Nanjira
9 months ago
If African governments do not invest in building the infrastructure needed to leverage AI, the âAI Messiahsâ who sing âAI will solve all of Africaâs problemsâ will continue to shape the future of AI in Africa
www.lcfi.ac.uk/news-events/...
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The Paradox of Africaâs Autonomy in Shaping its AI Future - LCFI
This 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, ...
https://www.lcfi.ac.uk/news-events/blog/post/the-paradox-of-africas-autonomy-in-shaping-its-ai-future
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Nanjira
9 months ago
What if, in the quest to change our food systems, rather than attempting big âtechnologicalâ leaps alone, we paved the path there, perhaps a little more slowly, but together, one âlow-tech, common-sense improvementâ at a time?
publicbooks.org/the-low-tech...
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@nanjira.bsky.social
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The Low-Tech Side of Agri-Food Innovation - Public Books
Is âlow-techâ a more sustainable alternative to moving fast and breaking things? Or just a new iteration of the neoliberal fantasy?
https://publicbooks.org/the-low-tech-side-of-agri-food-innovation/
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Oh man, been reading a lot of his work lately. May he R.I.P.!
add a skeleton here at some point
9 months ago
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Nanjira
Dr Abeba Birhane
9 months ago
they are openly advocating for the use of physiognomy in recruitment make it stop
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"...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. âGenesis?â ... /1
9 months ago
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âHow 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?â đ„đ„đ„
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
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(PDF) Ubuntu is Not Only about the Human! An Analysis of the Role of African Philosophy and Ethics in Environment Management
PDF | 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...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299445262_Ubuntu_is_Not_Only_about_the_Human_An_Analysis_of_the_Role_of_African_Philosophy_and_Ethics_in_Environment_Management
9 months ago
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Nanjira
Dr Abeba Birhane
10 months ago
itâs 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 itâŠ. to assess the merit/usefulness, clean up their mess, and come up with alternatives
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Nanjira
10 months ago
"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
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AI Is Bad News for the Global South
The coming wave of technology is set to worsen global inequality.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/17/ai-global-south-inequality/
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Nanjira
10 months ago
Valuation is a âpolitical technology.â 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...
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@nanjira.bsky.social
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The Politics of Price - Boston Review
How accounting protocols undermine public goalsâfrom decolonization to climate action.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-politics-of-price/
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Nanjira
Dr Abeba Birhane
10 months ago
'critique is service' is the hill I'm going to die on
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Nanjira
Margaret Mitchell
10 months ago
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 itâs awful.
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2025 is the year I get to say, âThanks for coming to my TED talkâ. đ
10 months ago
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ââŠefforts 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.â đŻ
www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...
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Frontiers | Politics by Automatic Means? A Critique of Artificial Intelligence Ethics at Work
Calls for âethical Artificial Intelligenceâ are legion, with a recent proliferation of government and industry guidelines attempting to establish ethical rul...
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence/articles/10.3389/frai.2022.869114/full
10 months ago
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Nanjira
Seye Abimbola
12 months ago
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...
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âWestern âManâ has been over-represented, at the expense of the thingification of âothers.â (AimĂ© CĂ©saire) And so, in order to unsettle the coloniality of power, we will need to redescribe what it means to be human. (Sylvia Wynter) /1
10 months ago
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âŠdevelopment 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
11 months ago
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âThe 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
11 months ago
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Nanjira
11 months ago
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...
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Strengthening Africaâs 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...
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/africa-informal-economies#
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"People often complain about demagogues, or wish that politicians might be more sincere. But to do good, politicians (paradoxically) must be hypocrites â or actors." đ€ đ
www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/dem...
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Democracy Theatre & Performance
Democracy, 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 ...
https://www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/democracy-theatre-performance
11 months ago
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« âŠthe market-obsessed language of commercial solutions is almost comically inadequate to the enormity of the challenge. Neoliberalism has no regenerative power in it: it canât cure itself, much less the world. » đźâđš
www.publicbooks.org/hopelessness...
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âHopelessness Makes Possible a New Hopeâ
Though itâs more than a hundred miles from the coast, during the early evening of October 29, 2012, my apartment in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had the salty ...
https://www.publicbooks.org/hopelessness-makes-possible-a-new-hope/
11 months ago
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Didnât 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 đźâđš)
12 months ago
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Nanjira
Rowenna. 2 ânâs. Ro-WEN-na.
12 months ago
Data is *contrived* not collected. Pro tip: any time you encounter references to âcollectionâ 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?
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Nanjira
Rowenna. 2 ânâs. Ro-WEN-na.
12 months ago
Data is never âcollectedâ, it is only *generated*. This isnât merely a pedantic semantic gripe; by misrepresenting âdataâ as something that exists in nature & has only to be scooped up, evasion of accountability for data harms has already begun Data doesnât exist until someone constructs it
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Nanjira
Rowenna. 2 ânâs. Ro-WEN-na.
12 months ago
Data is not âcollectedâ, it is constructed, imposed, insinuated, attributed, replicated. To speak of âcollectingâ data is to conceal the design choices, motives and power dynamics that determine the dataâs shape and purpose.
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Nanjira
Ryan Musser
12 months ago
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
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