Episode 4 - African Data Futures with Angela Okune, Temi Odumosu, Minne Atairu, Andrea Wallace, Neema Iyer

[Music] Welcome everyone to the final episode of the Accessful Who Podcast. It's Mulemo here and joined by Chow and we are at the final point of our kind of exploration into this question of digital restitution. We have over the past couple of episodes really tried to track a kind of exploration of the nature of the digital within the African context and in relation to African memory, African heritage and the question of restitution. And we have spoken to a lot of really great people who are doing exciting work to try and work through some of these questions including testing out strategies for thinking through digital restitution at a practical level in terms of working with communities but also in terms of thinking through questions of rights and ownership at all at different levels. And we've also done a bit of a whirlwind of a kind of museum practice and museum collections and digitization of collections as well. And so today as the kind of final session we're looking forward, we're looking to the future and thinking about what might be the kind of infrastructures of our African data futures and that the idea is ready to think through the forms and frameworks that are available to ask to move forward in this way. And in the sense we've already covered some of these topics already in our conversations with Gourla, with Nima, some of the kind of imagining that's already happening by a lot of other practitioners, such as the Women's History Museum in Zambia. But today we're just sort of buckled out and kind of try and think through how we might learn from all these different projects to create a framework that could really work for the future. Absolutely, thank you, Mulemo. It's so interesting because we have covered a lot, like a lot, just here you speak and I myself, despite being there through all the episodes, like wow, that is a lot of data and there's a lot of themes that we've covered but it's been really amazing journey. And as you've said in this episode, we're looking at African data futures and the infrastructures that frame the work that we're doing now, but also that we'll continue to frame the work that we're producing. So we're generating all this data. We are digitizing, we're putting collections online and at the same time all these activities exist within certain frameworks, certain standards and this framework in essence really determine how this data is used as we so in the copyright and in the legal framework episode that we are still working in systems that govern data production or its production. And so this episode is not so much about museum practice, specifically, but rather practices around data and data production as a home. Data is not created in a vacuum. You know, when we talk about infrastructure, we're not just talking about server equipment. We are talking about people. We are talking about, you know, the artifacts, we're talking about the different ways in which all these components that come together to bring this data to life interact with each other. And for data to have meaning at the core of it, it has to be related to people in one way or another. For you and I, with Lemo, we have gone through very many variations of this. Even as we are collecting data on African restitution in a way, still making sure, or we keep bringing ourselves back to the point of, well, but who is involved in restitution, who are the parties who are engaging in this discussion and it really speaks to that kind of people/make data intersection, you know. We start off with Angela Okune, who is a scholar in a researcher who specializes in data infrastructure. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am in the final days of finishing up my PhD. I'm in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California Irvine. So infrastructures right are kind of, the general understanding is the systems that kind of enable the circulation of whether it's goods or knowledge or meaning, people, power, you know, I think it really is the kind of basis of movement for all of these things. And here again, I'm drawing on kind of the social studies of science and technology to really think about infrastructure not just as, you know, most people think of bridges, most people think of these kind of big infrastructure projects that we're so used to, but I also add a layer of the social to understand infrastructure as as something that requires the people in practice as well, right? So it's shaped by the people as well as shaping people. So Angela speaks to this idea of adding a layer of social, of the social to understand infrastructure and to better understand data. This reminds us of Nimae's work. You remember her from episode one and today she shares the practical ways in which the connections between data and people, between people understanding and remembering and visualizing data are being implemented in Uganda. For us, I thought it was very interesting to try to think and present data in a different way than because if you just walked up to someone on the street and showed them some chart, you know, indicating, you know, something is going up, something is going down, I think a lot of people would struggle to really interpret what you're telling them. And for me, it was really important to make it accessible. That is really what guides all my work is making information accessible because I understand how jargon-y tech can be. So if you went into a community and you started talking about algorithm algorithmic bias and surveillance and digital identity and encryption, like all these words, they're so big, they're so like what does it actually mean? So one thing that I'm interested in researching right now is this concept, it's quite new to me as well, but it's a concept of data stewardship or data trusts or data collaborators or data commons. So it's thinking about different ways in which we bring our data together and in which we benefit from that data. And I'm very curious of like thinking what does that look like in the African continent. So for example, if there's several organizations working on digital restitution and everyone has some kind of data, then how would you pull all that different data in one place? How would you decide how you govern that data? How would you decide how you share it? How people can donate to it? How you can get profits from it. So I think it's an interesting concept and it's something that I'm very interested in in looking at and trying to see like what are different African values that could also support this kind of a model, but also I mean even thinking about African values like values are not set in stone, right? So it can also be like how do we decide what our values will be as well? So I think it's a very interesting space and something that needs a lot more thought and work and working with very different stakeholders to kind of imagine what that could look like. In a previous episode, we touched on this question of ownership of data as it relates to IP and particularly sort of discussed with Nottandor these questions of Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural strategies for thinking through ideas of IP. And Nema brings a really interesting positionality to this when talking about data stewardship and kind of collective ownership of forms of data and responsibility towards how that data is governed and shared which is really exciting to hear from her and I think really speaks to how we might start to use strategies from our own context as we kind of first intimated in the first episode to begin to think about other ways of dealing with digital restitution and digital data in relation to restitution in the first instance, but of course I think really points to other contexts as well. I remember when we were talking about the kind of ways in which the digital is magic in that it exists everywhere in Norway at all, but this speaks really to what Nema is saying around ownership and a responsibility for caring towards data really brings us closer to an understanding of what it meant to have Indigenous knowledge systems to transfer them into digital spaces. You know, and this is something as you said, Mulem Nottandor brings up in the previous episode and these questions around data ownership, data stewardship are not just questions that we are talking about in an abstract form in a museum setting they they apply in various ways. Where is the data being stored? Who owns it? Who owns the actual infrastructure of the data that we are seeing, for example, is Kenya's heritage, or South Africa's heritage, and maybe a heritage? At the end of the day, we own it conceptually, but it exists within someone's framework or certain summers or certain organizations. And with the entry of companies like Google, and Amazon, and Siong into the cultural heritage space, it really brings up an interesting dilemma and discussion around ownership from the perspective of who is the custodian of the data. So why we met all in Dahlgen say this is maybe a heritage online, who is actually taking care of it at the end of the day. Angela speaks to this very brilliantly because the discussion that we have had with the past, I found in a news article that quoted the Kenyan President, Urukenyata. This was in October 2020. And it quoted him as saying, if you let me quote it, we must look for a common vision in the dreams of our ancestors. We must seek out their wisdom and preserve their memory. We must bring them to life in a way that present generations can relate through technology. You can begin that journey by visiting the National Museums of Kenya page on the Google Arts and Culture platform to learn the stories of our folk and cultural heroes, relive their experiences, draw the inspiration you need from them in order to play a part in constructing and exemplifying our national ethos. And so I found this quote so striking, because what does it mean when Kenyan youth are advised by their president to turn to Google for the dreams of their ancestors? And so it really has stuck with me that, I have no problem with Kenyan's being advised to turn to their ancestors. Of course, it must be that way. But to then go through an intermediary that is Google, which is known to have extractive data for profit as part of its business model, it really just has left me at odds. It's important to reflect on the ways in which this isn't just a conceptual ownership of data. It's a physical one as well. And we often don't really think about the physical nature of how data lives in the real world, like where does it actually reside? And what are the power dynamics that come from the physical manifestations of data? Timmy Oudamoso, who's an academic art historian, who we've heard from many times already in this podcast, as well as Minne Atairu, who's an artist really exploring a lot of these kinds of themes, reflect on this from a museum data and restitution data perspective, also thinking particularly about the African continent. We also have to think about, OK, so the digital is a space of potential. But of course, who are-- like who owns the service? Like there's an enclosure around the digital that it's invisible. But it's there. And it's right back center in the subcolonial framework. So unless we're going to start thinking on a deep level about owning our own before thinking about satellites and server farms and where things are going in a different kind of way, and even-- I know that there is a lot of activists talk about the potentialities of big coin and all of these crypto contexts. Well, yes. But in a way, that's also mapping a neoliberal capitalist logic, just offering different potentialities. So even though we know that we live within constraints and structures, within enclosures, whether they're big enclosures that we cannot feel the edges of or small enclosures, OK, how can we still think and knew in those contexts? I think this is where the creativity comes. And it's the creativity that you can think of in relation to how do diasporas thrive out of a cultural context, left of community, detached from language, unable to have a fully formed sense of an identity that's rooted in one place but has a plurality of identities. Well, how have we historically thrived? And how can we create thriving spaces of potential within the context of what we know are kind of wider nations of power, right? I mean, I do think that in relation to digital restitution, as we've been talking about, there is a need to just engage with institutions, or Western institutions, knowing that the idea of digital colonialism is very real. And I like the term. It's something that one of my favorite artists coins thinking about how Western institutions continue to extract and monetize resources from African communities using digital technology. So how do we pay attention to that as we think about restitution? Even in our communities, how do we ensure that what we're doing internally is not reinforcing the idea of digital colonialism? We're not giving off our data freely to institutions who just want to continue extracting and plowing and monetizing our resources. You know, throughout the series, we've really been asking questions. But as much as we've been asking questions, I think the work that several practitioners not to mention, the Women's History Museum of Zambia, and other practitioners that we have spoken to are also giving us answers to the ways in which some of these questions can be addressed practically. And at this point, we'll hear from other speakers, from Angela, from Temion and Dres, well around what are the kind of models of data stewardship of custodian ship that we could learn from, that we could borrow from, in a bid to really make this a holistic, but also a human-centered approach, an Africa-centered approach to digital data and data futures. Oh, boy. Easy question. Yeah, I mean, I definitely don't have the answer. But I do wonder if there might be something to learn from what's been going on around indigenous data sovereignty, which is a movement that I've kind of followed from afar, but is especially strong in New Zealand and Australia, and also in various parts of the US and Canada, where various indigenous communities are thinking about pushing back against kind of objectified regimes of objective data as an object without recognizing the kind of relations within which data is embedded. And so they have come up with various protocols. They have, I think, been working around how to keep the materials within community, what forms of engagement with the materials make sense. Because when you ask that, when you give the example, I just wonder, what does it mean to even get the information back on what's up? What does that experience like? And either other forms or genres of engagement that can be kind of established, framed, cultivated, set up, experimented around. I don't know. Whether it's art-- I feel like the nest collective has been doing some of this stuff in the Kenyan context. Whether it's a gallery of missing-- and I know you've folks have been involved in it as well-- so the gallery of missing artifacts. There is a beautiful exhibit from 2016. I believe around missing data, the concept of missing data, and just an empty folder of what is missing. And so I don't know. I think there are various creative ways that people can tactile in a very material way and engage with this material that might not be getting it back on what's up. So I would be really interested in diving in more about people's experiences around that and what forms they would want it in. And I think it's different for different communities. I don't think there is a one size answer. We need to start thinking about ways to even limit digital access to the people for whom it's most appropriate, or thinking about different forms of labels and licenses to communicate the appropriateness of the reuse on the front end. So there's been work in my Kim Christian. and Jane Anderson around local contexts. And there's another project that's called Enrich that's looking about data sovereignty. But these are asking these really important questions around how do we enable reuse according to the complexity of the material itself rather than this idea of ownership and exclusivity and being able to commercialize. Because so often, that's not the goal of trying to make these things available. It's more about how do we educate, how do we contextualize, how do we protect the person rather than the right-tolder. And it's a really important question when we're thinking about the potential of computational processing and the digital divide. Because right now, all of that power is also held in places that have benefited from wealth transfer from colonization. And so those sorts of technologies and the availability of them are shaping that area as well and how we think about what's possible with computers and technology. - Listening to Angela and Andrea, we realized that it's not so much about inventing entirely new ways of relating to data or trying to create whole new systems, whole new server farms. But rather, it's about building on existing practice and finding ways to amplify and expand on the really important work that's already happening and to find ways to ensure that more people have access to that and tell me really touches on this. - But the objects that have moved out of an African context have become a kind of diaspora. And in becoming a diaspora, they have acquired stories, histories, experiences. They have been resignified. Also, my way of being put into glass of the trees in temperature controlled spaces, which is not how they were originally envisioned or used. Right? So the question of ownership is one, like so on the one hand, when I think about ownership, I'm thinking about a certain kind of cultural authority that still resides with the communities from which these artifacts come from. And this cultural authority is about a world view, like their cosmology, their worldview, their way of thinking about what it means to be human, the relationship with the more than human world, their spiritual practices and so on. And I think it's important to maintain that sense of, a cultural, I don't like the word agency so much because of the way it's used in different contexts, but this kind of a sense of cultural authority that continues to belong to the communities from which these objects come from. But then you have the objects then taking a forced migration of varying kinds. And then they become a diaspora and then they're doing other kinds of work in the cultural domain, both in physical museum spaces and then again when they're replicated and turned into digital form. - This point of term is about the ways in which these objects and material heritage within mediums in the global north have taken on whole new lives. It's such a valuable one in thinking about African data features and what data restitution means for a future or kind of African digital heritage in a sense. Because I think sometimes we can feel like restitution of African heritage is in a sense a call on a reversal going backwards to some idealized pre-colonial time. But I think what Tim is pointing to is the realities where we are now and how we need to face the histories that we have kind of inherited together, the realities of what those histories have resulted in. But also the responsibilities and also the possibilities of what now needs to be created. And by doing so we can really start to think about, okay, restitution has this capacity to potentially create something new for the African continent and for the ethics of our relations with other parts of the world. And we need to begin framing what that should be and what we want that to be. And the digital collections, digital restitution in particular really call on us to think about why are we doing this? What are we trying to achieve? And what are the best models, the best infrastructures, the best strategies, the best practices for making that happen? So I think after the last couple of episodes we've really tried to explore that together and ask questions for ourselves and for anybody listening who's interested in the same about how to do this and what are the possibilities. And while a lot of it is quite challenging, I think they are some really exciting spaces and they're definitely people doing some really exciting work. And while we've touched on a lot of subjects, there are probably a few gaps, a few things that are still important to kind of touch on. Tell for you what are the kind of key things. I mean, okay, the many. We have talked about the idea of a digital graveyard in which we are digitizing thousands, even hundreds of thousands of objects and artifacts and archives that just sit in servers in no one accesses them and no one knows where they are in five to 10 years. It's very interesting to see that we're talking about data, not just as a technical abstract concept, but as a social concept as well. And this brings about the questions on caring for data, caring for this digital data. Just as you would, I like the term a digital garden in itself. You know, you have to tend to it, you have to read it, you have to watch it. And so even when we create this data from an African perspective in particular, we are saying that we are creating this data, we are planting the seeds. And we hope that this seeds, this data grows into something else, you know, that people use it for other things. And so this idea behind digital gardening really is a core point of data sustainability in the ways in which we're saying that this data that we are creating right now, we wanted to be accessible 10 years from now. And so we have to put in the structures, whether it's funding structures, whether it's human resource capacity to not just create data or digitize data, but also take care of it. One of the things, as you mentioned now, child, that we haven't even really discussed is the absolute amount of energy that collections in their physical form use, in sort of temperature control storage rooms at museums or the North. But how that is then replicated in digital collections and how these servers and these infrastructures that we've mentioned in and of themselves are major energy gaseleurs. And all of these kinds of questions feed into this question of what is sustainable. Do we see these collections really being used in their digital form as you just asked in, say, the next 10 years? And if so, in what way and what really makes sense? And I think that one of the things we've really just been emphasizing over and over again in so many of our speakers have spoken to is that there's this current rush to digitize thousands and thousands of objects in the global North. And what we're speaking to is what is the purpose of that? In what way does this create ecosystem? In what ways is this really usable? And in what ways is this looking to repair so much of the damage of the past? We're just replicated in what ways is it possible to then care for this data? Or are we simply, as you say, creating more graveyards? And I think we're kind of emphasizing, hey, what could be possible if we took a little bit more time? We're a little bit more careful. Ask ourselves the right questions and did this in the best possible way, in the most ethical way and in a way that brings all of those different aspects of the ecosystem on board? I think one of the things that we have talked about is that digital illustration is a monster in its own. That there's so many questions and so many things that we need to consider. But at the same time, I say this with a very firm conviction that we shouldn't be shying away from these questions. We shouldn't be shying away from seeking answers and doing the work because if you're in a position where you feel that digital digitization is the easy way out or is the easier route, you're probably not asking the right questions. And what we've seen through the episode is that as much as the art questions, the ways of really coming and creating solutions for them, you know Malimo when you say that a lot of the work rests on African shoulders. It is very true. At the same time, we're saying that even digital illustration, digital institution in itself is not a substitute for physical restitution. How do we make it so that digital restitution digitization is aiding in this work that African practitioners have to do within the restitution process? They're not separate in the sense that digital restitution is not a solution or is not something that would say, okay, since we've a digital restitution, we don't need the physical stuff anymore. What we're saying is that digital restitution is aiding the process of physical restitution and should aid in the ways in which it can allow for reconnecting to objects, it can allow for dialogue, it can allow for knowledge reduction, it can allow for questioning as well. And this work that we are doing as African practitioners in setting a stage for this digital work to happen as it aligns to our humanities and our context and our histories, as well as our features is extremely, extremely crucial. Child drops the mic. I think that brings us to the end of our podcast. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us on this journey of Christian. This has been Access for Who? A podcast by myself, William Omuela and Chao Tayanamaina. Thank you very much for joining it. This podcast is brought to you by Open Restitution Africa, a collaboration between African digital heritage and Andani Africa. The podcast is produced by Chao Tayanamaina and William Omuela with Hunzili Numbos Otoala and Le Tabolaca Gumere on research. Thank you to Josh, Chiyun Disa for the music, Karugumaina on design and Annelene van Hehmbiek on editing. The podcast was made possible by 99 questions at the Stift on Homeboy Forum in Balinese Loss. This podcast is also available in Zin form in French and German at www.openestitution.aprica. www.homeboyforum.org. Thank you for joining us. [BLANK_AUDIO]