Marnie Chesterton

It's estimated that 54% of transition minerals are located in or near indigenous territories.

And those are minerals that are used for things like data center construction, EV batteries, making smart weapons, smartphones, etc.

They're critical to essentially the data infrastructure that we use today.

And because they're on indigenous territories or nearby, it often drives things like land grabbing, displacement, and biodiversity loss.

But there's also this really big issue that folks are talking about, and that's data governance.

So indigenous peoples typically maintain that indigenous data is collectively owned.

And existing national and international data privacy laws generally fail to recognize this.

So, for example, the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union prohibits

It protects individuals, but it doesn't recognize collective ownership.

So as a result, companies can make technical use of data originating from indigenous territories like satellite images or climate and language data.

And they can do this without any obligation to obtain community consent.

So it's a really big topic of conversation now and looking at that sort of double-edged sword of AI use.

OK.

And do you think what's going to happen is that indigenous peoples are going to have to change their rule and get a sort of an indigenous version of GDPR?

Potentially.

I mean, I think it's probably more looking at how state and national governments around the world can align their laws and regulations to be more supportive of Indigenous rights.

So I think that's obviously a bigger move to try and sort of get the world to lurch over to recognizing Indigenous rights.

But having stronger, more ethical sort of laws in place and guidance principles in place, I think, is really what people are talking about in terms of what these next steps look like.

Well, thank you both for insights into AI in Africa, fitting nicely into our Africa Day theme.

It's time for that bit of the