Dealing with Digital Bias Requires Tech Diversity
Thrive Global, founded by Huffington Post Arianna Huffington, quoted me here - yes, technology needs diversity to deal with digital bias.
According to Ndubuisi Ekekwe, a founder of the non-profit African Institution of Technology, digital technology has the potential to open “vast untapped potential for farmers, investors, and entrepreneurs to improve efficiency of food production and consumption in Africa.”
Digitization in farming throughout Africa is already having a positive impact. However, in this region where literacy rates are relatively low (about 58 per cent compared with 83 per cent globally), poverty rates are high (half of the people of sub-Saharan Africa live below the poverty line), gender gaps are large (about 80 per cent of those in poverty are women), and women do between 50 and 60 per cent of farming work, there are significant concerns that the technology solutions are not meeting the needs of those who need it most. And since solutions being developed in these regions may underpin future social, economic, and political structures, the risk is that the resurgent social intolerance and divisiveness that we are seeing today around the world will become institutionalized. And the means of combatting that divisiveness will be rendered inert.