Biography
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Conference contributions 2
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PUBLIC SECTOR TRANSFORMATION IN NIGERIA:
Opportunities, risks and governance challenges
The possibilities of using AI to change the way the public sector works and improve the services it provides are a phenomenon that continues to be investigated by governments globally (Wirtz et al., 2019). AI offers transformative opportunities in Nigeria, a country with long-standing governance issues of inefficiency and bureaucracy that are stifling development. This paper presents an extensive analysis, which will include policy document analysis, as well as a case study analysis of pilot projects for AI in agencies in Nigeria. The findings shall shed more light on how AI can deliver measurable gains, from automatically processing citizen applications to predicting resource allocation and fraud in public expenditure. But we project that critical risks may arise: algorithmic bias can perpetuate discrimination norms; opaque AI decision-making can diminish accountability and citizen trust; public AI systems are potentially vulnerable to data breaches and cyberattacks; and AI usage can create a greater digital divide if it is not accompanied by an investment in digital literacy (Sun & Medaglia, 2019). The outcome of this paper calls for the establishment of a complete governance system, including ethical guidelines, algorithmic impact assessments, public procurement standards for AI and institutional capacity development in the field of regulation and oversight (Floridi et al., 2018). The study aims to add to the comparative AI governance literature by analysing the Nigerian context and how it differs from emerging international governance frameworks, thereby shedding light on the unique challenges of developing democratic AI governance systems.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA:
Examining public services, healthcare and indigenous language preservation
Although artificial intelligence has the potential to drive positive change and spark innovative product growth and development, such advances carry enormous risks of reinforcing and expanding existing inequalities amidst the increasing adoption of AI systems in various segments of public life in West Africa (Crawford, 2021; Eubanks, 2018). This paper advocates a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary analysis of inclusive development in the framework of AI, to explore three interrelated areas, namely public service delivery, maternal health care and preservation of indigenous languages. These areas, usually studied independently, have common structural weaknesses: governance gaps, lack of data infrastructure, digital exclusion, and a centralisation of knowledge and decision-making with AI in institutions from the Global North. Based on an intercountry comparison (Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal) using a multi-case study design that integrates data from all three countries, this paper aims to analyse how AI is being adopted, controlled and experienced by its users across contexts, with a focus on identifying shared trends and distinguishing similarities and differences in ethical, institutional and distributional implications. There is a steady momentum of tension between technocratic optimism in seeing AI as a development solution and critical concern that it could reproduce some of the structural inequalities, governance failures and epistemic marginalisation that keep occurring (Couldry & Mejias, 2019; Joshi et al., 2020). This paper presents an integrative framework that integrates several issues related to AI's impact on West Africa's development, including equity-oriented design, democratic governance, epistemic justice of West African peoples' knowledge, institutional capacity-building, and regional solidarity based on cooperation among West African countries for shared AI infrastructure, as well as data governance and regulatory harmonisation