Africa

Lavina Ramkissoon, Africa’s AI Mom: ‘In Our Countries, Many Innovations Are Born Out Of Necessity’

Published

4 days ago

June 8, 2025

lavina-ramkissoon,-africa’s-ai-mom:-‘in-our-countries,-many-innovations-are-born-out-of-necessity’

Lavina Ramkissoon, 47, moves like a fish in water through the infinite aisles of GITEX Africa, the region’s massive technology fair, which took place in Marrakech in April. Ramkissoon is the African Union ambassador for the east, north, and south of the continent and seems to know everyone: top big tech executives, constantly brainstorming visionaries, and designers of a distinctly African digital future.

Her work consists of advising 27 African countries on projects with a common denominator: using digital technology as a lever for change. She studied computer science in South Africa and completed her education at Harvard with postgraduate degrees in business and artificial intelligence. She explains that a few years ago, a group of African women nicknamed her “Mama AI” because they found her last name difficult to pronounce. She embraced the nickname and turned it into her personal brand. In Africa’s digital ecosystems, Ramkissoon is now known as the AI Mom.

The nickname also has a personal dimension. Ramkissoon says her two daughters started coding at the age of eight and, by 13, earned an IBM scholarship to study quantum computing — a field they introduced her to and one she now finds fascinating, especially for its potential to inspire dystopian scenarios where machines take control. For Ramkissoon, technology in general — and AI in particular — are powerful tools for massive expansion that must be kept on a tight leash. Under control, whether in its simplest or most complex form, digital technology can be the engine for a great leap forward for Africa.

Question. How can AI help with development in Africa?

Answer. In a thousand ways. I like to give examples that make its potential tangible. There’s a young man in Uganda who, at 16 years old, created an AI app that helped his grandmother get better performance from their family farm, using information on crops, harvests and meteorology. It worked so well that other farmers in the area began to use it, also with excellent results. In Africa, innovations born out of necessity abound.

Q. Is agriculture the sector that can most benefit?

A. I’d say it’s the second, after health, where technology can help enormously to optimize scarce resources. In Zambia, they’re completely digitalizing their health system to improve efficiency in access to facilities and the dispensation of medicine, particularly in rural areas.

Q. Are there structural problems that African countries need to resolve so that this technology can reach its full potential?

A. In Africa, just like everywhere else, technology operates in expanded ecosystems and requires multidimensional approaches to reap the most benefit from it. AI can help us save energy and reduce food waste. Imagine a system in which we know, in real time, the supply of a certain grain, let’s say wheat. Let’s say Nigeria has a surplus and Ghana has a deficit. We could meet that need with maximum agility. But to do so, we would have to make progress when it comes to the free movement of goods and people. AI is a tool that allows us to expand, that improves us, but always with human beings holding the brush as artists at work, as authors.

Q. Could optimism about AI’s potential for social impact encourage African leaders to drive digital transformation?

A. I hope so. It is certainly pushing us as a continent to reflect on how we can use this new tool to maximize social benefits. It is an extra motivation.

Q. Is there a risk that we’ll be dazzled by AI and that will cause us to discard less sophisticated, but perhaps more effective tools, in certain contexts?

A. What comes to mind is mobile money [economic transactions via text message that are very popular in sub-Saharan Africa], which arose on the continent to deal with deficiencies in internet connectivity and has allowed money to flow more freely. It’s a system based on an infrastructure that, today, we consider almost rudimentary. It has improved the lives of millions of Africans who don’t have a bank account or stable access to the internet.

Q. Is there a truly African approach to addressing the gender gap in technology training and professions?

A. A recent UNESCO study said that for every 100 African men with Excel training, there were 40 women. We have a lot of work to do. In the political sphere, progress has been notable. There are many female ministers in African governments and there are beginning to be female presidents, most recently in Namibia [Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who began her term in March]. But we have to bring that change down to earth and extend it to the rest of the population, especially in the scientific-technological field. Perhaps a truly African approach could come from putting our faith in youth [70% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is less than 30 years old] as the basis of development for the continent: giving a young man or woman a computer with internet connection and waiting for the unexpected to happen.

Q. Is it arrogant to think that technology could be the solution to, for example, climate change, which is taking such a high toll on Africa?

A. That’s almost an existential question, with pressing dilemmas: humanity depending on technology to solve its problems, versus technology using us to evolve itself. Or, humans becoming increasingly robotized and AI becoming increasingly humanized. To avoid getting bogged down, we need to return to a fundamental view of humans as inherently optimistic and kind beings. And we must not forget that we are in control and that climate dystopia is a choice. The paradox is that we have the technology to stop the destruction of the planet, but at the same time, we believe that we have lost the battle.

Q. Is that perhaps due to the profound systematic changes to our way of life that facing the threat would imply?

A. For all of our virtues, human beings tend towards complacency and comfort, towards thinking in the short term and assuming that someone in the future will fix the mess we’re currently making. We have to find equilibrium in our relationship with nature and not limit ourselves to inventing electric cars to reduce emissions and selling carbon credits to corporations. Faced with the scenario of losing control of the planet or of technology that we created, I insist on humankind’s capacity to decide every day, at all times.

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Africa

Trump Pushes Courts To Allow Deportations To South Sudan: What You Need To Know

Published

2 weeks ago

May 29, 2025

Jordi Alonso Martinez Yanez

trump-pushes-courts-to-allow-deportations-to-south-sudan:-what-you-need-to-know

A federal judge has already ruled that the government violated a court order by putting eight migrants on a flight to South Sudan. This week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to continue with the accelerated deportation of migrants to third countries. The request comes after a federal judge in Boston ruled that the government violated a court order by putting eight migrants on a flight to South Sudan without giving them the opportunity to legally challenge their expulsion.

The flight, which departed last week, landed in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, where the migrants have been detained at a US military base. According to court documents, the government notified them only 24 hours in advance that they would be deported and did not allow them access to lawyers or a process to allege credible fear of torture or persecution, as required by law.

Who are the migrants?

The eight men deported have criminal records for violent crimes. One is a citizen of South Sudan, another is from Myanmar—and the government says he will be transferred there—but the remaining six have no ties to South Sudan, the country originally designated as their destination. Most come from countries that have refused to accept their repatriation, which is why the US administration tried to send them to a “safe third country.”

The six were informed that they would be sent to a country currently facing armed conflict, mass displacement, and political violence. According to their testimony, presented in court, they fear for their safety if they are sent there.

“Manufactured chaos” by the government

Judge Brian E. Murphy ruled that the Trump administration had violated a court order issued in April. That order required the government to provide migrants with a fair hearing before sending them to countries where they could face torture. Murphy noted that officials “deliberately misinterpreted” the court order and accused them of “manufacturing the very chaos they now denounce.”

In his most recent ruling, the judge did not order the migrants to be returned to the United States, as their lawyers had requested. Instead, he accepted a proposal from the government itself that immigration proceedings be conducted from the base in Djibouti. However, days later, the Justice Department filed a motion for reconsideration, arguing that conducting these proceedings outside the country is too complex. Murphy responded sarcastically: “It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder than they anticipated.”

In addition, the judge emphasized that having a criminal record does not eliminate the constitutional right to due process.

The case reaches the Supreme Court

On Tuesday, Attorney General D. John Sauer filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court to overturn Judge Murphy’s order. In his brief, he argued that the district court’s decisions impede the exercise of presidential powers under Article II, including the management of foreign relations, control of the military, and enforcement of immigration law.

Sauer described the migrants as “some of the worst illegal aliens” and said the process imposed by the judge allows these individuals to remain in the country for years, “victimizing law-abiding American citizens.”

Beyond this case

This is not an isolated incident. In previous cases, other federal judges have accused the Trump administration of misrepresenting court orders. In Washington, Judge James Boasberg launched a similar investigation into the deportation of another migrant under similar circumstances. In Boston, Murphy also ordered the government to facilitate the return of a gay Guatemalan migrant sent to Mexico, despite his reports of being kidnapped and raped there.

For now, the future of migrants in Djibouti remains uncertain. The Supreme Court will have the final say on whether the government can continue with expedited deportations to third countries without offering the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.