Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and increasing uptake in Africa hold significant promise for socio-economic development. At the same time, it increases the need for African people to have control over how and when digital data and technologies about them are processed and used with a human-centred approach. At ACIST, we believe that there is a great danger for the increasing uptake of AI in Africa to push our people to the periphery. Such an imbalance of power in favour of digital technology can create a range of both societal and economic problems, and the best way to address these is an approach which places Africans in the centre.

In an era of unprecedented strides in digital innovation, ACIST 2024 seeks to explore how and why a human-centred approach can and does ensure the well-being of African people. How can we think and act in such a manner that the ultimate aim of any digital innovation is to make African lives happier? What should African businesses, governments and individuals be doing to make modern digital resources become more efficient and productive for our people. How can we use scientific research to inform and persuade African states and development partners to implement what the United Nations calls Human Rights Based Approach to digital transformation? These are few critical questions reminding us to keep African people in the centre of digital innovation.

The conference theme, Human Centredness in African Digital Futures, is therefore meant to help us envision an African future where digital technology delivers outcomes such as development in freedom, improved life quality, equitable progress, and pan-African access to food, housing, education and health. ACIST will bring together a diverse cohort of scholars to forge a collective path toward an African future where its people are digitally empowered with realized human aspirations. By cultivating a shared understanding of our roles in digital innovation, the conference endeavours to chart a course where African digital futures are not solely focused on technical capabilities, but should also consider ethical, social, and cultural
implications.

In this 10th edition of ACIST, we are inviting scholars and practitioners to share ideas, based on research, about Human Centredness in African Digital Futures from many different theoretical, philosophical, policy and practical perspectives.

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.