Race and diversity

At the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) in Windhoek, Namibia that happened on 24-26 September 2025, I had the chance to share my thoughts on some of the central narratives shaping AI governance in Africa. My reflections fundamentally stemmed from conducting tech policy research from an Afro-feminist lens across the African continent for years, which has left me apprehensive about how much AI and other technologies will indeed meet the continent’s needs for an inclusive society, as aided by the dominant policy-making narratives and approaches. In seeking to understand this, I realise that we are far from this realisation at the moment. To fully understand how this policy making is informed in Africa, it is important to acknowledge how narratives are formed. They require discourse around emerging and existing conversations which we use as guides, conscious or unconscious, in sense-making around any topics, events or issues. Narrative entails the underlying stories we use to rationalise what happens, or explain actions taken among other things. I highlighted that over the last few years, the narrative that AI will somehow lead to the continent’s development has gained consensus, and been promoted by actors primarily in the policy-making space. These include governments and regional bodies, multi and bilateral development partners, civil society, grassroots movements as well as the technical landscape which has adopted this language in their functions across Africa. While expressed differently across these actors, this narrative can be summed up as "AI for Development" (AI4D). In brief, this article centrally argues that because Africa’s engagement within the global AI ecosystem has so far been shaped by unequal power relations. This position merits a fundamental rethinking of what AI4D should mean in practice through policy and governance thinking which looks structurally at the continent’s intertwined crises and challenges in relation to AI’s real potential for overcoming them.Continue reading at GenderIT.org.

Learn how Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust used reciprocal mentoring between BME staff and leaders to support career progression.

Black parents in the UK often face unique challenges when navigating the education system, particularly concerning school exclusions.

Over the past 30 years, museums have turned to participation in the hope that direct involvement of non-museum staff would serve their claims to be accessible, inclusive, representative and diverse. And yet, adding participation to museums has often generated conflict, disappointment and anger. Deconstituting Museums argues that the difficulties produced by adding participatory practice arise […]

Reparations are not only necessary, but achievable. When done right, they benefit us all.

Our volunteers have finished cataloguing Colonial Office correspondence from Cameroons and Togoland, explore these records here.

In this blog post, Gaverne Bennett (PhD student at the University of Leicester) and Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal (BBIH editor) discuss how the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) can be used to research and teach the histories of race and ethnicity.

 Medicine, Race and Activism Time Line

https://bcatimelines.org/medicine-race-activism/
Resource compiled by the Black Cultural Archives which documents the history and contribution of Black medical care workers in the Health system and NHS in 19th/ 20th /21st centuries . It includes some biographies as well as photographs and details of their oral history and other archive resources. Also covered are examples of events relating to racial discrimination in medicine and healthcare in the UK

This report (written by The Caribbean & African Health Network secretariat to the APPG on Black Health) finds that Black women in the UK who experience symptoms caused by fibroids are facing delays, poor care and dismissal by healthcare professionals. The report lays the groundwork for continued action, policy development and further research.

Is UK publishing diverse? Read the Excluded Voices report, our latest research into the number of Own Voice authors and illustrators creating children’s books.

Sutton Trust’s latest analysis of the educational backgrounds of those in influential roles across the country – this makes it “one of the professions with the lowest private school attendance” in the report. The proportion who attended a state school has increased by 29 percentage points in a decade. The report also looks at what proportion of Britain’s different “elite” professions attended university, and what proportion attended the Russell Group or Oxbridge.

Latest insights on the most popular undergraduate routes from Southeast Asia to the UK.

Explore key findings and recommendations to improve HIV prevention for Black African and Caribbean communities in London. Actionable insights and stats.