Technology & Human Rights Fellow (2026-27)
Between 2021 and 2024, Arthur did a PhD in Political Philosophy from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He was supervised by Jeroen Hopster and two Frankfurt School philosophers, including Dorothea Gädeke and Joel Anderson, who studied with Jürgen Habermas, and examined by Sven Nyholm and Emma Rutkamp Bloem. His innovative thesis is inspired by intercultural thinkers like WEB Dubois, Iris Marion Young, and critical Republicans, including Gädeke. It rejects polarizing decolonial discourse, instead theorizing political concepts for Africa’s freedom in a digitally interdependent age as non-domination.
While at Utrecht, Arthur was part of the Dutch research in ethics and the philosophy of technology, helping to develop frameworks for responsible innovation. He also co-designed and co-taught a Research Master’s course on technology ethics, with a focus on the non-domination of Africa.
During his time at Utrecht, Arthur expanded his research on AI and Society by exploring the geopolitics of digital technologies. His work appeared on Al Jazeera and Data and Society. He was invited to speak by organizations such as Global Affairs Canada, the Swedish International Development Agency, and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ). Arthur also coordinated partnerships between major tech companies and Dutch universities. Using his connections in Silicon Valley, he brought together Google philosophers and academic philosophers for workshops on value-sensitive design and techno-moral change.
Arthur’s contributions to AI and Society have been recognized internationally. He was invited to join the Editorial Board of the Stanford University Journal of Trust and Safety and the Chatham House High-Level Task Force on AI and Society, both of which have published his scholarly papers. In 2023, he became UNESCO's AI consultant for Zimbabwe and helped assess the country’s readiness for AI adoption.
In 2020, Arthur worked as the technical writer for the AI4D project, funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre. At University College London (UCL), he wrote several AI policy papers and briefs. He co-authored a paper on the use of AI in agriculture with John Shaw Taylor, the Head of the Department at UCL and the UNESCO Chair in AI.
From 2015 to 2019, Arthur was a Technology Research Fellow at Strathmore Law School in Nairobi, Kenya. The U.S. Open Technology Fund (OTF) supported his research on digital technologies, security, and human rights, particularly his use of the OOONI free software to track internet censorship in sub-Saharan Africa. He later joined the OTF advisory council. Arthur’s work earned him several honors, including being named one of Africa’s top 35 researchers in AI and Governance and one of the top 10 digital changemakers for 2014-2024.
From 2010 to 2015, Arthur worked as a human rights lawyer and social worker in Zimbabwe and in England and Wales. As both a lawyer and a social worker, he focused on helping people affected by economic and social systems. He represented refugees, highlighted human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, and advocated for psychosocial rather than biological interventions for Black men with psychosis in London. The principle of non-domination guided all his work.
In 2014, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington, D.C., recognized Arthur’s courage by awarding him the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship. This allowed him to join the Washington Human Rights and Democracy Promotion community. While there, he supported young African leaders and helped the Obama administration launch the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young Africans, for which he served as a speaker. Arthur continues to mentor students across Africa, helping them apply for college and scholarships. He also founded and runs a community learning centre in his hometown in Zimbabwe, offering classes in music, dance, robotics, science, and the arts.
Fellowship Project: The Unholy Alliance of Foreign Data Brokers and African Authoritarian States
The current wave of datafication has provided new tools of oppression to African authoritarian governments. A number of governments are currently engaged in a troubling collaboration with foreign data brokers. This partnership, ostensibly meant to rapidly improve public services through AI technologies and big data, enables the pervasive electronic tracking of citizens’ online and offline activities for political and economic purposes. This ‘unholy alliance’ is not an isolated incident but rather part of the broader historical political relations between the African political elite and foreign-owned corporations. It is driven by the logic of governments accumulating power, while brokers amass profit. Utilizing Shoshana Zuboff’s unified theory, Arthur aims to bring conceptual and normative clarity to the critique of Big Tech’s power in Africa by showing how its social source of power predates the digital.