👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Meta’s $1.6 billion fuel

15 DECEMBER, 2022

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META SUED FOR $1.6 BILLION FOR FUELLING HATE SPEECH IN ETHIOPIA AND KENYA

A lawsuit filed in a Kenyan court on Wednesday accused Meta of fuelling political unrest in Africa, and demanded that the company pay over $2 billion in victims’ funds and make significant improvements to its service. In the lawsuit, Facebook is accused of causing death, displacement of families, vilification of individuals, and destruction of communities in Kenya and across Africa.

Mercy Mutemi, a legal practitioner representing the petitioners, said that the fine would serve as a restitution fund for the victims of violence incited on Facebook. According to her, the lawsuit is targeting Meta “for prioritising hateful speech on its Facebook platform, and for its content moderation decisions or lack of investment in content moderation”.

This is not the first time Facebook has been sued for inciting violence. In 2021, Muslim advocates sued Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer of the company Sheryl Sandberg for Muslim hate speech.

In 2021, Rohingya refugees sued the company for $150 billion over Myanmar hate speech.

With the current Kenyan case, the first petitioner is Abrham Meareg, an Ethiopian academic, whose father was doxxed in a racist attack on Facebook and murdered shortly after. Despite reporting the posts to Facebook, nothing was done to remove the posts.

The second petitioner, Fisseha Tekle, is a former Ethiopian researcher and legal advisor at Amnesty International whose reports of violence during the Ethiopian war made him the target of abuse on Facebook. 

Katiba Institute, the third petitioner, is one of Kenya’s eminent legal organisations set up to defend the Kenyan Constitution. Amnesty International has also joined the petitioners.

INSIDE EKITI’S PLAN TO BUILD A VIABLE TECH HUB

Image Source: Unsplash

Nigeria’s Ekiti state government, in collaboration with TechCabal Insights and Utiva, held a Demo Day on August 6, 2022 to graduate the inaugural cohort of 50 successful participants of the Ekiti Software Development Programme 1.0 and showcase their projects, following a rigorous four-month learning experience.

The event, which was held at the Ekiti state capital, Ado-Ekiti, was attended by top government officials and key stakeholders from the academia and private sector. Goodwill messages were delivered to the graduating trainees by Akintunde Oyebode, commissioner for finance and economic development; Olu Olatunji, director of ICT, Ekiti State University (EKSU); and Adedamola Ajibade, director general of Ekiti Development and Investment Promotion Agency (EKDIPA).

In his keynote address, Oyebode talked about Ekiti’s knowledge economy and how the software development programme fits into the progress made so far. According to him, developing the state’s tech talent pool is key to growing the economy and at the centre of enabling policies for the availability of investors and jobs.

Zoom out: During the Ekiti Software Development Programme, participants were divided into six groups to work on capstone projects and develop them as tech startups, under the supervision of the tutors.

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IN OTHER NEWS FROM TECHCABAL

Meet the companies that SA tech firm Alphawave is making big bets on.

Exin Versa launches Xelar, its digital supply chain management and finance solution.

Interview of Cornelius Ashley-Osuzoka, developer experience lead at Flutterwave.

CBN’s new rules are a copy of India’s cashless economy program from 2016.

Some things to know before founding startups in Africa.

JOB OPPORTUNITIES

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