AI and Equality

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Launch
2025-09-08 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Zurich)
The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed in collaboration with Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global <AI & Equality> Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.

This launch webinar will present the methodology and the process of development of the toolbox featuring the contributors and introduce the webinar series that focus on each stage of the lifecycle with the selected case studies.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Webinar 1: Introduction & Stage 1
2025-09-15 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Zurich)
Across African contexts, development and technology projects are often driven by external actors with little grounding in local priorities. Solutions frequently arrive pre-packaged—built around assumed problems, rather than those identified by communities themselves. This is particularly evident in AI deployments in agriculture, education, and public health, where tools may miss the mark, or worse, exacerbate inequities.
This webinar serves to explore Stage 1 of AI Development which is fundamentally a participatory and grounded approach which is crucial for centering gender equity, given that women often carry the brunt of labor in agriculture and caregiving, yet remain underrepresented in AI design and governance.
The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed by Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Webinar 2: System Requirements
2025-10-06 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Zurich)
In many African AI deployments, system requirements are defined by international technical partners or funders, often without fully understanding the day-to-day realities of use. This leads to design choices—like requiring high-speed internet, English-only interfaces, or complex interfaces—that make tools ineffective or even harmful. In this webinar we look at how requirement setting should function as a bridge between vision and use: Aligning system features with cultural context, infrastructure gaps, and social expectations; Identifying constraints early on—connectivity, literacy, consent, power dynamics—and building around them and making conscious trade-offs between speed, scale, and equity.

The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed by Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

The Latin American AI & Equality Toolbox Introduction
2025-10-16 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Zurich)
We have partnered with the Chilean Centro Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial, CENIA, to co-construct a Latin American Spanish language version of the validated <AI & Equality> Toolbox, with use cases relevant to the regional experience.
The partnership builds on the learnings from the workshop structure and outreach from the African <AI & Equality> Toolbox.

Translating and adapting tools like the <AI & Equality> Human Rights Toolbox can facilitate the co-creation of a common vocabulary and common understanding on the specific needs and challenges of each region of the world, unlocking informed debates about their visions for data with purpose and collaboratively finding examples of regional use cases of AI.

Register here

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Webinar 3: Data Discovery
2025-10-20 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Zurich)
In many African AI projects, available datasets are either imported (trained on non-African populations) or incomplete (lacking local language, gender, or cultural nuance). This misalignment risks perpetuating systemic bias under the guise of neutrality.This webinar will offer a deep dive into the Essential Questions of Data Discovery including a case study on the requirement for building effective TFGBV prevention datasets that include African languages.

The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed by Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Webinar 4: Model Selection
2025-10-29 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Zurich)
Imported or generalized models often underperform—especially when they are trained on data that does not reflect local language, environment, or lived experience. For AI to be trustworthy, accuracy alone is not enough. In this webinar we dive into what inclusion and efficiency means ensuring the development or building of systems that don’t require technical expertise to interpret—ensuring that trust, oversight, and agency are accessible to all users. Whether a rural health worker, a student, or a community organizer, each person should be able to understand what a system is doing and why.

The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed by Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Webinar 5: Model Interpretation
2025-11-12 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Zurich)
In African deployments, there is often pressure to launch rapidly, without thorough contextual testing. But skipping this step is where trust breaks down—and harm begins. Testing must happen with communities, not just on them. In this stage we examine the opportunity to reflect on how power operates in AI: Who gets to say if it works? Who can question it? Who can stop it?
The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed by Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

The Latin American AI & Equality Toolbox Launch
2025-11-19 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Zurich)

The African AI & Equality Toolbox Webinar 6: Deployment
2025-11-26 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Zurich)
In African contexts, post-deployment oversight is often underfunded or overlooked. Once a system is launched—especially by international actors—it can become invisible, even as its consequences grow. In this final stage and webinar; we look at what true accountability means: planning for ongoing monitoring, shared governance, and the possibility of “no.” We will explore what it means for systems to be responsive—not just to data—but to dignity.
The African AI & Equality Toolbox is a strategic initiative designed to empower African stakeholders—policymakers, technologists, civil society actors, and communities—to shape Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are contextually relevant, inclusive, and grounded in human rights.
Developed by Women at the Table and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), and adapted from the global AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox Initiative in collaboration with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this African iteration provides practical tools and methodologies to guide equitable AI development across the continent.
The Toolbox applies a Human Rights-based AI Lifecycle Framework, integrating reflective questions and the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) developed with the Alan Turing Institute. It emphasizes participatory, multidisciplinary approaches and is rooted in feminist, decolonial, and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) principles and incorporates lessons from emerging digital rights challenges, ensuring AI systems are designed with safety and dignity at their core.
1PM GMT | 3PM SAST | 4PM EAT
Register here

USAWA AI: Building Ethical AI for Historical Justice with Marie Rodet | AI & Equality Open Studio
2026-02-19 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London)
Open Studio | USAWA AI is an interactive, educational experience built around an AI avatar that draws on carefully mediated testimony from West African survivors of domestic servitude. Rather than recreating historical scenes or offering total explanations, the AI is designed to speak partially and cautiously, reflecting the ethical limits of testimony and the sensitivity of slavery. USAWA AI demonstrates how AI can be designed to protect vulnerable voices rather than extract from them, embedding care and restraint into the technology itself. By foregrounding partial testimony and ethical limits, it challenges dominant AI models that thrive for ‘total knowledge’ and ‘neutrality’, showing instead how AI can support social justice and equitable representation. This work offers a concrete example of AI as an infrastructure for dignity and inclusion.
Explore it: https://jiwegamestorage.blob.core.windows.net/game-files/Usawa%20AI/V4/index.html
About the speaker:
Marie Rodet is Reader in the History of Africa at SOAS University of London. Her work explores public history, gamification and digital methods as ways of translating historical research into interactive formats that enable ethical engagement with complex and difficult histories, and support equitable, collaborative forms of innovation. She is the narrative and research lead on three educational mobile games—Usawa, Usawa AI and Umoja—all developed in partnership with Jiwe Studios. These projects transform historical research into interactive experiences that foreground equity and ethical engagement, and exemplify her broader commitment to research-led innovation and inclusive research culture.

Register here via our community on Circle

CSW70 | When Algorithms Discriminate: Gender Bias in Justice Systems
2026-03-11 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York)
Wednesday, 11 March 2026
4:30 – 6:00 PM ET
NGO CSW
10th Floor, Church Center of the United Nations
777 United Nations Plaza, New York

An In Depth Discussion: What happens when courts replace judges with computer algorithms? We are told these systems are “objective” and “fair” but the evidence tells a different story. From bail decisions to sentencing, algorithms are making life-changing choices about women based on biased data and male-centered assumptions. A woman seeking justice after assault may find her credibility automatically questioned. A mother may be flagged as “high risk” simply because of where she lives or her employment history. Meanwhile, these same systems treat men’s violence as more predictable and less dangerous.
This is not science fiction, it is happening right now in courts worldwide. Join us to uncover how technology is creating new barriers to justice for women and girls, and what policy solutions can effectively address it.

Laura Nyirinkindi | UN Special Procedures Member, Working Group on discrimination against women and girls
Africa Regional Vice President of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (Federación Internacional de Abogadas)
Fernanda K. Martins | Fundacion multitudes, Director of Strategy and Advocacy
Caitlin Kraft–Buchman | Women At The Table; CEO

What People in Rural Villages in Togo Can Teach Us About ML/AI and Privacy with Zoe Kahn | AI & Equality Pub-Talk
2026-04-09 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London)
🔗 Access paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3710968
How do people living in rural villages in Togo feel about the use of emerging technologies in humanitarian aid? This work reports on the privacy concerns of people living in rural Togo related to the use of machine learning models trained on phone data to allocate cash assistance to people living in poverty, highlighting an innovative method — sociotechnical visuals — to explain complex technical concepts so that people living in rural villages with limited literacy, formal education, and familiarity with digital tech could provide meaningful input.
About the speaker:
Zoe Kahn is a postdoctoral research at the Research Centre for Trustworthy Data Science and Security. She received her PhD in Information Science from UC Berkeley and her B.A. in Sociology from New York University. Her research lies at the intersection of computer science, law, and society. She explores how people can meaningfully participate in the design of sociotechnical systems — especially those shaping public life, governance, and digital rights. Dr. Kahn has collaborated with diverse communities across Africa and the United States, including extended fieldwork in rural Togo.
Her work combines qualitative research with creative methods such as storytelling and sociotechnical visuals to make complex technical systems more understandable, opening up dialogue with people with varying levels of literacy, formal education, and familiarity with digital tech. Beyond academia, she has worked at a civil rights law firm, tech startup, and Microsoft–where she contributed to responsible AI tooling and governance frameworks.

Register here via our community on Circle

AI & Equality Festival of Ideas
2026-05-22
Where the frontlines meet the code.

Algorithms are deciding who gets bail, who gets a loan, whose language gets spoken by machines, whose body gets flagged at the border, and whose labor gets automated.

The AI & Equality Festival of Ideas will convene the people working with algorithms; linguists building language models for African languages, feminist scholars rewriting the benchmarks, digital rights lawyers fighting surveillance states, health researchers exposing algorithmic bias in clinical care, and organizers connecting the dots between AI, labor, climate, and indigenous land rights.
On May 22, leading organisations will be sharing out loud, across disciplines, about what they are finding, what they are fighting to create, and what it will actually take to get there.

Stay tuned for more updates! Visit the Festival Page!

On the Agenda: A full day of 90-minute sessions hosted by leading organizations working at the frontlines of AI and society from around the world.

Sessions running across all time zones, from South Asia to the Pacific Coast. Wherever you are, there’s a session for you covering the questions that matter most:

What are visions of society that work for all, and how do we build it?
Whose knowledge gets encoded — and whose gets erased?
What would a rights-based, feminist, decolonial, AI actually look like?
How do we get from research to real change?

Full programme drops April 15.

Register on our Circle community >> where the festival will be happening!

Moving Beyond Big Tech: Blueprints for Community-Led Language AI with Claudia Pozo | AI & Equality Pub-Talk
2026-06-30 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London)
Paper: TBD (available in June)
The digital world suffers from a profound linguistic disparity, particularly in Africa where a lack of local language content and traditional, Global North-led language technology models fail to meet community needs, often resulting in data extraction and inequitable solutions. In an 18-month research project, in collaboration with the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), we highlight a powerful alternative: a growing grassroots movement of community-based language technology initiatives across Africa that adopt a bottoms-up approach, prioritizing local needs and incorporating indigenous philosophies. This approach centers technology as an act of collective creation and community survival, yet it faces significant challenges, including a heavy reliance on Global North funding that can conflict with goals for self-determination and critical concerns around data governance and ownership in regions with underdeveloped legal frameworks. Ultimately, the research advocates for a fundamental shift in technological practice to support these community-centered development models, providing blueprints for the Global Majority to decolonize AI.
About the speaker:
Claudia Pozo is Language Justice Co-Lead at Whose Knowledge? She’s a South American brown feminist, multifaceted activist, researcher, social scientist and strategist, whose work is grounded in knowledge and language justice. She holds an MPhil in Development Studies and a BA in Communications.

Register here via our community on Circle
