ISSUE 48/DEC2022 - Flipbook - Page 68
Africa’s Most Influential Women | EVERYDAY HEROES
NAW: Why is telling your story and the story
of women in tech, a big part of She’s In CTRL?
Anne-Marie Imafidon: Control is the
CTRL. So, its’ that idea of taking technical control
and using technology to take control. I am, telling my
story because there are many people who don’t believe
people like me exist, or don’t believe that it’s possible
to do what I’ve done, and be Black, female and young.
It’s important to tell this story because we know a lot
of the technical history, but there’s actually a very rich
technical ‘herstory’ that exists, and that impacts the
relationship people have with technology.
The fact that we still have people who think and say ‘I
don’t get these techy things’, or ‘I’m a woman, and this
isn’t for me, or women have never done this’; comes
from the fact that we don’t tell and share these stories
often enough. Hence, we have a social norm that’s
basically about not being technical. It’s necessary for
us to change that because technology is not a niche
side thing. It’s something that’s affecting every aspect
of our lives, whether it’s work or hobbies. Writing this
book and sharing these stories will hopefully inspire
and empower people to have more agency in their lives
through technical knowledge and literacy. This is super
important to me.
Why is it critical for women and girls, young
and old, knowledgeable about tech or
otherwise, to get in the game and create with
tech, instead of being consumers of what
others have created, especially African and
black women?
It’s important for us to be there because whether we
like it or not, being alive in the 21st Century means
technology has some role to play in your life. Be it at
work or in our interactions, it’s making decisions that
affects us all. But if we’re not in those rooms, those
decisions assume we don’t exist or those decisions
are being made in a way that then ends up harming
or impacting us, our standing in society and our
quality of life. In the book, I have a chapter called
in Holding Tech Accountable, where I give the one
example of a young woman who goes to the ice rink
in the US. It’s a friend’s party and she’s going there
to enjoy herself. There’s facial recognition at the ice
rink, which recognises her and says, this looks like
someone that’s been here before and has been in a
fight and is barred. However, she’s never been to that
ice rink before, but this technology has made that
decision about her and goes unchallenged. It has been
made by a technology that actually wasn’t built with
someone like her in mind. And we see this again and
again. It’s well documented across TED Talks and all
parts of the industry that often, when it comes to our
faces, facial recognition technology can’t tell us apart.
And that has implications for us, whether it’s the ▶
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New African Woman
l Dec 2022
“
I am telling my story
because there are many
people who don’t believe
people like me exist,
or don’t believe that
it’s possible to do what
I’ve done, and be Black,
female and young.”