From Douglas Blessing, Port Harcourt
Emerging technologies in the areas of genomics, artificial intelligence, automaton, and block chains are driving new forms of extraction and re-ordering African society, economics and ecosystems with similar disruptive shocks to previous colonization waves.
Due to the weak or no regulatory systems in African countries, corporations now see and use Africa as a petri dish for technological adventurism while making her the dumping ground for unwanted technological mistakes.
These were noted at a zoom programme by Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in collaboration with Africa Technology Assessment Platform (AfriTAP) on the implications of unregulated entry of emerging technologies in Africa.
The programme was led by Mamadou Goita, the Executive Director of the Institute for Research and Promotion of Alternatives in Development (IRPAD) based in Bamako, Mali.
During the programme, Goita, exposed that these technologies are new ways of colonizing the world especially Africa.
Goita noted, “We are not anti technologies, rather we are for technologies that do not jeopardize our interests as individuals or continent.
“We are firmly convinced that technologies are introduced as ways to improve people’s lives. Since they impact our lives, we should not be forced into accepting them without adequate assessment.
“We should be concerned with technologies such as gene editing because we are becoming dumping grounds for such experimentations.
“As an organization that is concerned about the health of the earth, we have noted negative changes in our culture and traditions due to the intrusion of rapidly deployed technologies.
“Some of these threaten to upturn our livelihoods and human rights across the continent with great impacts on agriculture, health and climate.
Goita emphasised that it is time for Africans to unite and reject what is pushed to them and also critically assess what comes in to us.
“We cannot sit and digest all that we get without examining the implication for our health, our environment, and our future. African governments should come together to say no to unproven technologies, otherwise we would be lost in the new technologies.
“Nigeria and other countries that are on the path of rapidly admitting genetic engineering should retrace their steps and ask questions from countries such as Burkina Faso who have tried it and have rejected them.
GMOs should not be part of our food system because it would negatively affect our health and biodiversity”.
However, HOMEF agreed that ‘science is not neutral, and it is dangerous for policy makers to claim to have certainty of safety technological products developed outside the continent and presented as though they were developed here.
AfriTAP insists that new technologies require careful assessment and interrogation, by Africans themselves.
