The recent launch of the latest version of ChatGPT on 14th March 2023 is a typical instance of rapid digital innovations which Africa and the world at large have experienced since the 1990s. Other innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, and big data are all at the cutting edge, inducing considerable social and economic changes in Africa. Whether Africans have coped quickly or slowly with these rapid digital innovations, any coping is never a straightforward issue especially because of the African background.
In the African background are strong natural, historical, cultural, linguistic and philosophical deposits which have been evoked variously to cope with rapid digital innovations. There have been forms of coping which embrace these innovations for what is famously called digital transformations of individuals, organizations, nations, and the continent as a whole. There have been forms of coping which resist, delay, keep at arm’s length, or even refuse some of these innovations entirely. This is because they, especially AI technologies, are perceived as threats to African lives. There have also been forms of coping in terms of financial and infrastructural struggles to access such new technologies, leaving many societies to lag in terms of adoption.
Still, rapid digital innovation and integration into Africa is a very real reality. Similar to the colonial onslaught that swept the continent in the late nineteenth century, the adoption of digital technologies seems inevitable for many African societies. Therefore, the pressing question now is mostly about African coping in key battlegrounds such as governance, culture, language, education, ethics, law, development, medicine, academia, economics, and agriculture. In order to maintain and develop African identities in the face of rapid digital innovation, how are we coping and how should we be coping?
As part of efforts to address this question, the 2023 (9th) edition of ACIST invites scholars and practitioners to share ideas, based on research, about Rapid Digital Innovation and African Coping from many different theoretical, philosophical, policy and practical perspectives.