Afro-Feminist Data Futures Manifesto

DataFest Africa is an annual event that ultimately celebrates data science and its ever-evolving impact on the African continent. Join us as we bring together data enthusiasts, researchers, academia, feminists, and governments in Africa to address gender data and artificial intelligence (AI) bias and promote gender equality in data.

Pollicy is a collective of feminist technologists, data scientists and key partners from women’s
and Community Based Organizations who have made this document on the occasion of the
2023 edition of DataFest Africa under the theme “Turning the Data Tables: No Gender Equality in
Tech AI without Data Equality.”

Data and technologies have been curated to shape and normalise gender biases, violence and
harassment especially for women, girls and gender-nonconforming people that are vocal about
Gender Equality concerns. Cognisant of the fact that data and specifically gender data is useful
in creating better and improved services online and offline, advocating for an inclusive internet
offline and online is our collective responsibility.

On 12-13 July 2023 Pollicy convened the ‘Afro-Feminist Data Futures Festival’ which brought
together 25 participants cutting across - feminist activists, legal scholars, academia and human
rights defenders from different global contexts from across Africa to re-envision the future of
data (including gender data, data governance, AI and other emerging technologies) on the African
continent from an Afrofeminist perspective.

Afro-Feminist Data Futures Manifesto