Funmi Ogundare
Founder and Curator of Living Sustainably Here: African Perspectives on the SDGs, Olatoun Gabi-Williams, has warned that Africa risks a new form of colonialism through Artificial Intelligence (AI), data extraction and foreign control of digital infrastructure, urging African countries to take concrete measures to protect their indigenous knowledge systems and cultural resources.
Gabi-Williams, who made this known at the launch of ‘Our Digital Lives and Indigenous Pathways,’ volume II of the Anthology, Living Sustainable Here: African Perspective on the SDG, at the CANEX book fair in Lagos, weekend emphasised Africa’s cultural heritage, digital technology and knowledge production.
She stated that the continent must take concrete, consistent and effective measures to prevent foreign interests from appropriating its intellectual and cultural resources.
Speaking with journalists, she explained that African countries must establish their own digital infrastructure, develop indigenous knowledge databases and ensure that local communities retain ownership and control of information about their cultural heritage.
According to her, the growing use of technology to document, preserve and disseminate indigenous knowledge presents opportunities for Africa, but also raises concerns about consent, intellectual property, community ownership and the terms under which such knowledge is collected, stored and used.
“What is paramount is ownership. We must ensure that we either own the digital infrastructure through which our knowledge systems are documented, preserved and disseminated, or we establish robust safeguards in our partnerships with non-African technology entrepreneurs seeking to support these efforts,” she stated.
On the implications of the repatriation of colonial-era artefacts to Africa, Gabi-Williams said indigenous knowledge experts must be identified and documented to help reconstruct the original meanings and significance of the objects.
She explained that many of the artefacts, which could include family heirlooms, totems and sacred objects, carried cultural, spiritual, ecological and social meanings beyond their physical appearance.
She warned that failure to involve African experts and institutions in the process could allow foreign technology companies to take control of initiatives aimed at interpreting and digitising the knowledge embedded in the artefacts.
“My concern is that if we fail to bring these experts to the forefront of conversations about repatriated artefacts, international technology companies and entrepreneurs may approach UNESCO and similar institutions, obtain access to databases of these experts and engage them in reconstruction initiatives without African institutions and communities having meaningful ownership or control of the process,” Gabi-Williams said.
She added that foreign companies could end up owning the initiatives, digitising and storing reconstructed knowledge in datasets over which they exercise control, while Africans remain excluded from the economic benefits derived from their own intellectual resources.
“We cannot afford to repatriate our artefacts only to watch helplessly as others, often our former colonisers, who remain outsiders to our pre-colonial ancestral experience, appropriate knowledge that gives these artefacts their meaning,” the founder warned.
To address the challenge, Gabi-Williams advocated government-led initiatives or public-private partnerships involving relevant institutions to compile and maintain databases of indigenous knowledge experts.
She said access to such databases should be regulated through consent-based arrangements, with different levels of access depending on the nature of the knowledge, particularly as some indigenous knowledge is sacred, restricted or communally held.
She cautioned that documenting such knowledge should not automatically confer the right to make it publicly available.
“Nature abhors a vacuum. So does economics. If we don’t mine our own cultural gold, others, even bad guys will move in and do it for us. The bad guys are often very powerful,” she stressed.
On education, Gabi-Williams called on African universities and schools to integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education into existing curricula, even where funding and infrastructure are limited.
She argued that the objective should go beyond resource-intensive practical sessions to cultivate interdisciplinary thinking, problem-solving, systems thinking and the ability of students to make connections across different fields.
On the second volume of the ‘Anthology, Living Sustainably Here,’ she explained that institutions could introduce lessons around real-world problems and case studies to encourage students to approach challenges from different disciplinary perspectives.
She also emphasised the potential of digital learning platforms to address literacy and educational inequalities, particularly in underserved African communities.
Although she expressed a preference for traditional approaches to teaching, including handwriting and reading printed books, which she said support cognitive development, she acknowledged that digital learning offers valuable alternatives where educational resources are limited.
Citing an essay by Kenyan EdTech strategist, Joan Mwachi-Amolo, in her book, she pointed to Worldreader’s work in East Africa as an example of how technology could help bridge literacy gaps.
She also emphasised the importance of parental engagement in improving children’s literacy, noting that digital platforms could expand access to learning resources and digital storytelling across geographically dispersed communities.
On the contribution of the CANEX book fair to Africa’s publishing industry, Gabi-Williams described the initiative of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) as an emerging platform for strengthening the continent’s literary and intellectual landscape.
She cited the CANEX Prize for Publishing in Africa, which offers $20,000 to the winner and $2,000 to each runner-up, as an important source of financial support for independent publishers.