<aside> 👉🏽 Objectives To advance ideas, knowledge and capacities needed to realize pathways toward equitable, safe, and just digital societies.
To create a platform for independent, evidence-based, and collaborative inquiry, that foregrounds the social impacts of technology in the global south.
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Emerging digital technologies are catalysts for positive social change, but only when they are designed and governed in a way that centres on social justice.
Current technology trajectories risk eroding human agency and rights, exacerbating socioeconomic inequities, and undermining norms and institutions for political accountability.
These harms are exacerbated in the global south because of low institutional capacity, persistent socioeconomic inequities, and weak systems of political accountability.
We need a fundamental re-imagination of our digital futures, rooted in values of care, equity, accountability and sustainability, and committed to enhancing the space for communities to determine their own futures.
Global narratives needed to be localised to reflect varying sociopolitical cultures and capacities in the global south.
While science and technology have immense power to shape society, scientific and technological development should not be a force beyond democratic participation, regulation and policy-making.
Because of the complex and emergent interaction between technology and society, and the uncertainty of outcomes and risks, conventional approaches to technology governance are inadequate.
Disruptive platforms for independent and sustained inquiry, that draw-in diverse forms of knowledge, anticipate the future, co-create solutions and cultivate effective public discourse are a need of the hour.