This paper reports on the ‘Africa, Law & [Emerging] Technologies Policy Hackathon’ 2024 held on 31 July 2024, convened by the Data Science Law Lab at the University of Pretoria. Hosted in the University’s Akanyang Building and online, the hackathon showcased postgraduate students who submitted solutions and thoughts as to how the hackathon challenges (child privacy online and data privacy in the public health context) may or could be addressed. The hackathon also featured emerging and established experts weighing in with thoughts on those challenges.
In presenting the hackathon challenges, Data Science Law Lab collaborated with two challenge partners – the Centre for Child Law, in the Department of Private Law at the University of Pretoria and the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
The challenge statements are focused on child privacy online and data privacy in the public health contexts.
The solutions presented at the hackathon reaffirms the stance of the Data Science Law Lab that the national context and priorities of African countries require a nuanced and sometimes bespoke application of the law and formulation of policy to support and promote AI research, development and application. And the challenges around implementing such nuanced and contextual approach cannot be addressed by one discipline alone.
The report of proceedings is available here.
