Afcacia

08/12/2025

EPISODE 6 of the Cause Effect 4.0 is out

What happens when machines are taught to understand not just global English, but Yoruba proverbs, Kikuyu idioms, Xhosa orature, Lingala slang, and the subtle rhythms of everyday speech? Who gets to decide which languages matter in the digital future, and whose voices are left out when they are ignored?

The push to build locally trained, culturally grounded AI raises deeper questions than technology alone. If data is the new oil, who owns the wells? Who controls the pipelines? And who profits when communities finally see themselves reflected in the systems designed to predict their behavior, assess their creditworthiness, or guide their healthcare?

There is also a looming economic question. If artificial intelligence is becoming the infrastructure of the future, like roads or electricity, what happens to countries that did not help build it? Will Africa once again be reduced to a market for foreign-made systems, or can it become a co-author of the tools that will shape global productivity, security and knowledge?

And perhaps the most human question of all remains unanswered. When a farmer in rural Kenya or a trader in Lagos speaks to a machine in her mother tongue and hears a voice that finally understands her, will that represent the triumph of technology or simply the beginning of a new struggle over power, privacy and participation in the digital age?

Dr Bayo (Olubayo) Adekanmbi PhD, CEO of EqualyzAI and founder of DSN - Data Science Nigeria speaks to podcast host Celina Lee.

Watch:

What happens when machines are taught to understand not just global English, but Yoruba proverbs, Kikuyu idioms, Lingala slang, and the subtle rhythms of eve...

04/12/2025

The rise of generative AI, experts warn, is accelerating long-standing patterns of misogyny by automating and amplifying harassment, deepfakes, and impersonation in ways that traditional safety systems and existing laws were never designed to handle

Researchers and women’s rights groups warn that a new generation of artificial intelligence tools is accelerating long-standing patterns of gender-based abuse, creating forms of digital harm that move faster, scale wider, and are harder to detect or control. The concern emerges in a world where at...

04/12/2025

Raila Odinga, Kenya’s most enduring political figure, dominated Google searches in 2025 even after his death on October 15 at age 80 while receiving treatment in India. Google’s Year in Search report crowned him the top trending Kenyan public personality, with his name sparking queries not just for news but for the very definition of “enigma”—a moniker that shadowed his six-decade career like a persistent echo.

Google’s “Year in Search 2025” report for Kenya reveals a nation deeply engaged with political personalities, major sporting events, and a persistent curiosity for cultural and global affairs. The annual analysis, which spotlights top trending lists, affirmed that for many Kenyans, the digital...

04/12/2025

As the world races to adopt artificial intelligence, a new The World Bank report reveals a critical truth: the biggest barrier for many countries isn’t talent or ambition, it’s compute power.

Modern AI runs on massive processing capacity. Without it, even the most promising innovators, researchers, and startups are locked out of the next wave of economic growth.

According to the Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025, “Countries at the forefront of AI development need to secure adequate computing resources to maintain their competitive advantage.”

But for many nations, buying or building that compute is either too expensive, too energy-intensive, or too politically risky.

"As the AI era accelerates, developing countries need to be prepared to leap forward. Small AI offers a unique opportunity to bypass traditional development barriers and spark homegrown innovation and inclusive growth," says Axel van Trotsenburg, former Senior Managing Director at World Bank.

Get the insights here:

As artificial intelligence sweeps across economies and governments alike, a quieter crisis is unfolding beneath the excitement: the world’s capacity to compute, the raw processing power needed to train and run modern AI, is becoming its own form of inequality. The Digital Progress and Trends Repor...

04/12/2025

Call for Op-Eds

We invite thinkers, critics, and futurists to submit Op-Eds that not only forecast the future but critique its present architects and question the very systems being transformed.

​We seek urgent, provocative, and deeply contextualized essays that dare to look past the hype and into the real-world implications of new tech.

Email: [email protected]

04/12/2025

Interview with Liisi Org, CEO, Latitude59

04/12/2025

The soaring power demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are colliding with a fundamental challenge in data centers: heat. As AI workloads become more complex and variable, the resulting temperature spikes force high-performance chips, like those in xPUs and HBMs, to throttle their performance by as much as 30% to avoid burning out. To manage this heat, operators currently overprovision cooling by up to 78%, creating a major drag on efficiency and cost.

The soaring power demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are colliding with a fundamental challenge in data centers: heat. As AI workloads become more complex and variable, the resulting temperature spikes force high-performance chips, like those in xPUs and HBMs, to throttle their performance by a

03/12/2025

✍️ Call for Op-Eds: The Future's Frontlines: AI, Quantum, and the Reimagining of Global Systems
Seizing the Narrative at the Turn of the Year
As the calendar turns, the world stands at a critical technological and geopolitical inflection point.

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence and the dawn of Quantum computing are not just upgrades; they are new foundational elements reshaping commerce, governance, knowledge, and power.

This End-of-Year/New-Year call invites thinkers, critics, and futurists to submit Op-Eds that not only forecast the future but critique its present architects and question the very systems being transformed.

We seek urgent, provocative, and deeply contextualized essays that dare to look past the hype and into the real-world implications of these exponential technologies.

The Core Challenge: Who Writes the Rules of the Future?
We are especially interested in perspectives that challenge the current Global North-centric discourse, championing African Perspectives as not just an ethical inclusion, but a necessary intellectual corrective for a more just and sustainable global future.

💡 Suggested Themes & Provocations
Your Op-Ed should address one or more of the following areas, driving a global conversation with a critical, futurist lens:

1. The Critiques: Interrogating Power and Algorithms
* AI Colonialism and Data Sovereignty: How do global data flows and proprietary AI models reinforce or dismantle traditional colonial power structures in the digital age? What does African Data Sovereignty truly mean in practice?
* The Quantum Gap: As the world enters the quantum era, how will the lack of infrastructure in the Global South exacerbate existing technological and economic inequalities? Is there a path to a Quantum Leapfrog?
* Systemic Questions: What fundamental global institutions (e.g., WTO, UN, Bretton Woods) are rendered obsolete or critically insufficient by the acceleration of AI/Quantum technologies?

2. The African Futures: Agency, Ethics, and Innovation
* Indigenous Knowledge & AI: Can African intellectual traditions (e.g., Ubuntu, Ujamaa) provide a robust, non-Western ethical framework for AI development that counters existing biases?
* AI for the Informal Economy: How can AI and advanced technology be innovatively deployed to address the unique complexities of Africa's dominant informal markets, healthcare, and climate adaptation, rather than just corporate-driven models?
* Decolonizing the Algorithm: Beyond representation, what does a truly decolonized AI look like in its design, data sets, and ownership structure?

3. Futurism: Paradigms and Projections
* Beyond the Hype: What are the most overlooked, yet critical, futurist projections for the next 5-10 years concerning the fusion of AI and biology, or AI and space exploration?
* The Nature of Work: What is the end-game of the AI-driven automation of knowledge work for a continent with the youngest population on Earth? What new forms of human enterprise will emerge?
* The Ethics of Tomorrow: If AI achieves sentience, how should a multi-polar, multi-cultural world negotiate a Global Sentient Rights Charter?

🎯 Submission Guidelines
We seek Op-Eds that are:
* Sharp, Original, and Argument-Driven.
* Backed by expertise but accessible to a global, educated audience.
* Respectfully provocative—aimed to start a critical conversation, not simply summarize one.

Length: 800-1000 words

Send your submission: [email protected]
The future is not a spectator sport. It is a debate. Lend us your voice.

28/11/2025

Dr. Ezekiel Mutua, MBS: "I believe in three Es. Education, Experience and Experience. Journalism teaches you to be more aggressive. The Fourth Estate is the custodian of public good. Journalism gives you a voice to the voiceless, to be bold, to be accurate and fair. I was very vocal as Secretary General of Kenya Union of Journalists. I studied leadership at Kenya School of Government and taught there. When I joined the goverment in 2007 as Director of Information, I found that the government was too bureaucratic. Some files are too classified, can't touch them. But I wanted to create change. So we started the Media Council of Kenya [MCK] to influence media policy in the government."

Live at the Intergenerational Dialogue Forum.

20/11/2025

Cyber attackers are increasingly deploying AI to automate phishing, impersonation schemes, and cloud exploitation in Africa. They are also exploiting exposed identities and misconfigured systems to break into networks.

Across finance, energy, telecoms, and government, Check Point Software Research reports surges in identity driven intrusions, AI generated phishing, and multi vector ransomware.

“AI has become part of the attack surface,” Lorna Hardie, Regional Director for Africa at Check Point Software Technologies, told Afcacia. “Attackers are using it to automate phishing and identity theft at scale. The only effective response is prevention first security that combines visibility, governance, and AI protection.”

"Adversaries increasingly convert edge devices into relay infrastructure and exploit cloud/API misconfigurations to move laterally,” says Kingsley Oseghale, Country Manager, West Africa at Check Point Software Technologies.

“Nation-state operators are using AI-assisted disinformation, disruptive malware, and hacktivism to erode trust and set conditions for future access,” says John Paul O., Country Manager, East Africa at the company.

Cyber attacks across Africa are rising fast and becoming more sophisticated, with criminals now leaning on artificial intelligence to scale their assaults across critical sectors, according to new research from Check Point Software Technologies. In Johannesburg, the company released its African Per

18/11/2025

The Virtual Assets Service Providers Act, 2025 is now in effect, providing Kenya’s first comprehensive legal and supervisory framework for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs). This marks a significant milestone in aligning Kenya with global standards on virtual asset regulation, consumer protection, and financial integrity.

Under the new Act, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) have been designated as joint regulators responsible for licensing, supervising, and overseeing VASPs. Their mandate includes ensuring compliance with measures to prevent money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing.

The National Treasury, working closely with CBK and CMA, is currently developing detailed regulations to guide implementation. Licensing of VASPs will officially begin once these regulations are issued.

For now, no VASP has been licensed under the Act to operate in or from Kenya

This is a pivotal moment for the country’s fast growing virtual assets ecosystem. A clear regulatory environment not only supports innovation but also boosts investor confidence, protects users, and positions Kenya as a responsible player in the digital economy.

For inquiries, CBK and CMA have shared dedicated contacts for stakeholders seeking clarification.

Kenya’s journey toward a transparent and well regulated virtual assets market has truly begun.

18/11/2025

A Personal Tribute: Monica Singer, the Visionary Who Believed in Blockchain -

It is with a heavy heart that I write this. Prof Monica Singer, the South African blockchain and Web3 pioneer, passed away on November 15 after a long fight with cancer and was laid to rest today. I had the privilege of sitting with her in Cape Town two years ago, and that conversation remains one