Critiquing Generative AI in Africa’s Media Ecosystems

""At a time when many are uncritically celebrating the advent of AI, this book is a wake-up call on the oppressive and extractive side of AI technologies that build on ideological biases and extractive logics of coloniality. The book mobilises concrete examples, case studies and from alternative decolonial epistemes such as Ubuntu and Afrokology to argue for tech solutions and sovereignty that benefit Africa. It is an essential critique of the potentials and dangers characterising Artificial Intelligence, and generative AI’s insertion into African journalism, with disastrous consequences for education and African public life. While there is open acknowledgement of the benefits of AI to the journalism sector, what is remarkable is its loud worry about AI’s harms and dangers that are unfolding in ways that reinforce African marginalisation."" Winston Mano, Professor, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster. ""Critiquing Generative AI in Africa’s Media Ecosystems is a thought provoking and incisive decolonial interrogation of the growing influence of generative artificial intelligence on African media ecosystem, digital participation and knowledge production. Lungile Tshuma and Trust Matsilele and the contributors provide a compelling analysis of how AI technologies are reshaping African journalism, culture and society. In advocating for context-specific and Ubuntu-centred approaches to technological innovation that are rooted in Africa’s diverse epistemologies, the book challenges the asymmetries embedded in global digital infrastructures. The book is a timely intervention that reimagines AI as a tool for epistemic plurality and social empowerment in Africa and a must-read for anyone invested in digital justice, media transformation, and inclusive digital futures."" Sarah Chiumbu, Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media, University of Johannesburg. ""Journalism practice has recently transformed substantially with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in many parts of the world. Generative AI has emerged as a powerful tool within this context, encompassing the creation, production, and generation of content, insights, and data by computational systems. The increasing dependence on generative AI tools and the drive towards a connected and unified world has sparked debates on the ability of the news media in the Global South to effectively engage with new media technologies. And one cannot deny the fact that the use of generative AI in the countries of Global South comes with context-specific challenges and opportunities. When looking at the African media landscape, the region represents linguistic, cultural, and socio-political diversity, as well as heterogeneity in terms of journalists’ and news organizations’ resources and capabilities to utilize generative AI in routine practice. Hence, the book ‘Critiquing Generative AI in Africa’s Media Ecosystems’ is a timely and significant contribution that calls upon to think about generative AI not from a global perspective, rather it demands to think more local application of generative AI that align well with the regulatory, cultural, political and ethical frameworks of diverse news media ecosystems within Africa. It emphasizes co-creation emphasizing the active role of communities that are not mere data subjects or users, but partners and authors/co-authors in the shaping of digital futures. The underpinning local context approach of this book calls for contributions in other parts of the global South where news media ecosystems require context-specific knowledge and application of generative AI."" Sadia Jamil, Assistant Professor, School of International Communications, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China.