Global Center on AI Governance | Whose Realities Count When AI Decides?

#GlobalCenteronAIGovernance #CGC: Whose Realities Count When AI Decides? How algorithms re-shape labour, agency & governance in the Global South This panel brings together perspectives from innovation, governance, health, labour and gender justice to examine how algorithmic systems reshape agency and institutional decision making in practice. Moving beyond abstract debates about ethics, the discussion explores how priorities are set within AI systems, what forms of public interest technology are emerging across sectors and what it takes to ensure that communities closest to the consequences of these systems are also closest to shaping them. By centering lived realities, the panel asks what it would mean to build AI infrastructures that respond not only to efficiency and scale but to accountability and collective needs - while highlighting concrete governance strategies and community led models already emerging in practice. The panel explores visions for a just and equitable AI future(s) from the perspectives of those actively engaged in establishing positive alternatives. The discussion highlights panelists’ aspirations and how those in the Global Majority are leading by example by setting norms and making efforts toward justice-centred AI. It also interrogates the commitments, institutions, and resources required to realise these collective visions as well as address potential barriers and tensions that must be resolved to realise these desired futures. Speakers: • Selamawit Engida (Selam) Abdella, Researcher at the Global Center on AI Governance • Dr. Rose Nakasi, AI Healthcare and Innovation Lead, Makerere AI Lab • Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika, Research Fellow, DAIR Institute and Post-Doctoral Researcher, ZeMKI-Uni Bremen • Joanita Najjuko, Digital Economies and the Future of Work Lead, Nawi Afrifem Collective • Emsie Erastus, Head for African Voices, Women in AI Ethics Plus (WAIE+) Facilitated by Marit Brademann, Extern with the AI Policy Lab at Umeå University and graduate student in epistemology at the University of Edinburgh. The Global Center on AI Governance serves as a global hub for research and evidence-led action on inclusive and equitable approaches to the use and #governance of Al technologies. ****************** On May 22, 2026, the AI & Equality Initiative hosted its first #FestivalofIdeas: a global, one-day online gathering designed to reframe the conversation around artificial intelligence as a political reality to be shaped. A collective act of sense-making: it was a day of rigorous, cross-disciplinary exchange led by the organizations and thinkers doing the most urgent work at the intersection of algorithmic systems and human rights. Partner organizations led the festival's core panels bringing their regions, their research, and the lived realities of the communities they engage with into a shared space where critical theory and frontline practice spoke to each other. Join our AI & Equality Community: https://community.aiequalitytoolbox.com/