The statement “gender equality for inclusive innovation” has become a common theme in modern technology discussions.
The declarations demonstrate progressive intentions but they fail to recognize the actual conditions which women in the Global South experience under the existing systems of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Information Communication Technologies (ICT).
Global South women should actively participate in technology development because their inclusion serves both epistemological and political requirements.
The existence of colonial power structures will remain intact through AI systems because they require substantial participation from all stakeholders to develop solutions which address Southern context complexities.
The current AI system functions according to the framework of “data colonialism” which Couldry and Mejias define as a methodical process that extracts data from Global South populations to benefit Northern (developed countries) business and institutional entities. The women who live in these areas perform most of the work which remains hidden but supports this entire system.
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Women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo engage in dangerous artisanal mining which produces cobalt, an essential material for lithium-ion batteries that powers AI built microprocessors.
Similarly, AI content moderators at outsourcing companies in Kenya handle work that harms their mental health while they create safe digital content for Western audiences. The women participate in technological creation yet face exclusion from both its control and the advantages it provides.
Furthermore, algorithmic systems deployed across African and Asian contexts frequently lack contextual validity. The development of credit scoring and criminal justice applications through AI technology has mainly focused on Euro-American design patterns which developers transfer to different regions without making necessary adjustments for local language, economic and social conditions.
The algorithmic microloan platform which a Kenyan woman uses to make her financial decisions has an operating system that uses data from formal economic activities which do not reflect the actual informal economic practices that exist throughout the continent. The system excludes users and treats them unfairly because technology transfer processes establish Northern knowledge systems as the dominant standard.
Epistemic Erasure
The Global South women in technology experience marginalization through their work and face additional challenges from epistemic violence.
The research conducted by academic institutions and industrial organizations in AI technology development demonstrates a decolonial scholars’ theory of “coloniality of knowledge” which shows Western cultural experiences as the standard for creating technological systems.
The primary natural language processing systems show major weaknesses in their ability to process African languages which results in digital spaces being inaccessible to hundreds of millions of women who speak those language).
This silencing of local knowledge (epistemic erasure) reaches its maximum extent through “parachute research” which involves universities and organizations from wealthy Northern countries flying into Global Southern communities to collect data and publish their findings in expensive journals that locals cannot access; then roll out programs that fail due to inadequate contextual grounding.
Women in these communities are positioned as data subjects rather than knowledge producers, their lived expertise systematically devalued within technocratic frameworks that privilege formal credentials over situated understanding.
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The consequences of this exclusion extend beyond its economic implications because it involves real-world results. The design of AI systems which handle healthcare, financial services and civic participation access will determine which people attain success and which people experience failure.
Global South women experience actual deprivations through algorithmic exclusion which prevents them from obtaining loans and leads to misdiagnosed medical conditions and limits their ability to act and results in their voices being omitted.
The “diverse digital future” which international organizations claim to support will continue to exist as an illusion until Northern capitals and corporate boardrooms stop controlling technological infrastructure.
A meaningful pathway forward requires structural transformation rather than a minor reform. First, intellectual property systems need to be modified to support technology transfer and local adaptation instead of protecting monopolies.
Second, funding mechanisms require a change from “capacity building” metrics which include workshop attendance and certificate distribution toward direct funding of women-led technology businesses and research groups which include Developers in Vogue from Ghana and Feminist Internet Research Network from India.
Third, international development frameworks need to make infrastructure sovereignty their main focus because Global South countries depend on foreign-owned server farms and proprietary platforms for technological resources.
Substantial to this transformation is the need to get Global South women not only seen as the recipients of technological charity but as the authors of innovation.
From mesh networks in rural Colombia to AI-enabled agricultural diagnostics in Uganda, women across the Global South are already producing contextually grounded technological solutions. The task is not to “include” them within existing paradigms but to redistribute the epistemic and material resources necessary to transform those paradigms.
From Hashtags to Power Transfer
The imperative to center Global South women in AI and ICT development is an essential matter which needs to be resolved through democratic processes.
The creators of technology implement their power relations into their systems because design teams who share identical backgrounds will create products which treat different user groups unfairly.
The hashtags and pledges that populate international development discourse (#EqualTech, #WomenInTech, #InclusiveInnovation) serve limited purpose when unaccompanied by concrete transfers of power over data governance, infrastructure ownership, and research agenda-setting.
The women of the Global South do not require additional representation on panels discussing their “challenges,” instead they require the institutional authority to define problems, allocate resources, and determine technological trajectories.
Anything less perpetuates the colonial extractivism that has long characterized North-to-South relations, now digitized and accelerated through algorithmic means.
The future of AI will be inscribed in code; the critical question is: who holds the capacity to write it? For the billions of women whose lives are already being reshaped by technologies they did not design, the time for rhetorical inclusion has expired. The imperative is now structural redistribution and epistemic justice.
*The views presented in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Diplomatic Insight.
Peseo Lao Pio
Peseo Lao Pio is from Tanzania, and is a highly skilled ICT professional with an interest in global politics and economic change in Africa. His devotion to the development of the continent is the reason he pursued a Master’s degree in Political Science at Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia (UIII). Pio brings extensive real-world experience to community welfare initiatives. He has worked as a mobile teacher for street children, contributed to critical environmental conservation projects, and held the role of community facilitator with VSO International. He was awarded the prestigious Best Student Award during his undergraduate studies for exceptional performance which demonstrates a consistent record of excellence in all his professional and humanitarian activities.
