The first Mozilla Festival House: Kenya will feature keynote speaker, Facebook whistleblower Daniel Motaung, and dozens of sessions exploring AI’s impact in Eastern and Southern Africa.
MozFest House: Kenya will debut September 21 and 22 at Nairobi’s Shamba House Cafe. The event will address challenges and explore solutions to issues like digital extractivism; governing AI systems and the datasets that train them; and building AI for Africans by Africans. MozFest House events, e.g., MozFest House: Amsterdam, are regional adaptations of the popular annual Mozilla Festival, and explore trustworthy AI and internet health from local perspectives.
MozFest House: Kenya will deepen Mozilla’s ongoing work in the region. Earlier this year, Mozilla expanded the Responsible Computing Challenge to eight Kenyan universities, helping bridge the gap between computer science and the social sciences; Mozilla Fellow Dr. Chao Mbogho leads this work. The Responsible Computing Challenge will expand to South Africa and Ghana next year.
Mozilla Common Voice continues to build open-source voice data sets for Kiswahili and Kinyarwanda — and to fund people and organizations building local tools with this data. Mozilla’s broader Africa Mradi continues to support local entreprenuers, developers, startups, and students building innovations and products that address local issues and funding research at the intersection of social justice and technology, which enhance tech accountability across the region.
Much of the event will be live-streamed online via LinkedIn or at the MozFest Plaza. Participants can also join and engage in our Dialogues and Debates Watch Parties, and exclusive Q&A with some of our speakers on Discord.
Says Chenai Chair, Senior Program Officer, Africa Innovation Mradi: “MozFest House Kenya is an unapologetic regional convening to speak truth to power around digital safety, digital rights, tech accountability, and overall, trustworthy AI in Africa. The festival is the premier gathering for activists, artists, technologists, and educators in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane and healthier digital world.”
Says Roselyn Odoyo, Senior Program Officer (Kenya): “Often times, digital rights have been purported to appear as non-fundamental or disconnected from people’s realities. This is an opportunity to connect people with communities that are furthering digital rights and uplift those movements.”
MozFest House: Kenya programming announced today includes:
- Keynote speaker and Facebook whistleblower Daniel Motaung. Daniel Motaung knows all too well the breadth and depth of Meta’s content moderation problems: A former Facebook content moderator based in Kenya, Motaung blew the whistle in 2022 for poor, unfair, and unlawful conditions. He also sued Meta for worker exploitation, neglect, and union busting. Motaung will speak at MozFest House Kenya on Thursday, September 21 at 11 a.m. The keynote will be streamed live on LinkedIn and the Mozilla Festival plaza.
- 30+ sessions at the intersection of AI and digital rights in Africa. MozFest events are known for their deep, interactive sessions — and MozFest House: Kenya is no exception. Among the sessions are: What is the path towards inclusive digital identity? The digital ID movement, AI and the risk of digitizing discrimination by Grace Mutung’u, Mustafa Mahmoud Yousif and Muthuri Kathure.
- Data Futures Lab showcase. Mozilla’s Data Futures Lab experiments with better models of data governance — models that aren’t exploitative, extractive, or colonial in nature. At MozFest House Kenya, the Lab will showcase local projects, organizations, and initiatives doing exactly this. Projects range from a misinformation and hate speech monitoring platform in South Africa, to a text and image identification tool for farmers in Uganda. Projects will present to a live and virtual audience of peers and experts. Mozilla will award impact grants totaling USD 30,000 and an audience favorite for “greatest potential impact.”
