Join CDAC Network at the 2024 Public Forum – Data, power and participation: towards the ethical adoption of tech

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• Date: Monday 2 December 2024

• Time: 15:00–19:00 (EAT)

• Location: iHub (Jahazi Building, 154 James Gichuru Road, Nairobi, Kenya) & online

This event has now finished! Stay tuned for updates.

Join us for CDAC Network’s 2024 Public Forum and drinks reception on Monday 2 December at the iHub in Nairobi, Kenya as we explore community participation in data and AI.

This year’s Public Forum will ask: what could accountable AI design and governance look like? Who controls the data shaping humanitarian action? Whose ethics should guide the take-up of tech in conflicts and crises? What information and tools do crisis-affected communities need to play a central role in decision-making?

As data-driven and generative machine learning solutions rapidly evolve, they bring incredible promise to enhance participation at scale, offer new insights and accelerate humanitarian impact – but also risk deepening inequalities and undermining diversity if not ethically governed. Through dynamic discussions, expert insights and real-world examples, we’ll examine how to shift power back to those most affected by crises.

Don’t miss this chance to engage with experts from technology, humanitarian response, media and grassroots action as we chart a path towards more inclusive, equitable and community-driven humanitarian technologies.

Agenda

15:00: Keynote – Nyalleng Moorosi

Nyalleng is a senior researcher at the Distributed AI Research (DAIR) Institute. Her research focuses on how we can build models which centre populations often regarded as peripheral. Before DAIR she was a research software engineer at Google, where she was one of the first employees at the Google Africa research lab, and a senior researcher at the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial research. Nyalleng is involved in efforts to democratise AI: she is a founding member of the Deep Learning Indaba, the largest machine learning consortium of AI/ML practitioners in Africa, and a member of A+ Alliance, an international coalition that seeks to not only detect but correct gender bias in AI.

15:30: Panel discussion

Nyalleng Moorosi, Senior researcher at the Distributed AI Research (DAIR) Institute 

Patrick Gathara, Senior Editor for Inclusive Storytelling, The New Humanitarian  

Monica Nthiga, Former Regional Director - Eastern and Southern Africa at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team 

Angeline Akai, Data Values Advocate

17:00: Drinks reception and networking