Speaking at a recent United Nations Security Council open debate in New York, Professor ’Funmi Olonisakin argued that there is an urgent need to understand and anticipate how scientific and technological advances will alter human agency in the future. This includes the implications of artificial intelligence for politics, society and security.

Professor Olonisakin, Professor of Security, Leadership & Development at the African Leadership Centre, spoke on the topic ‘Futureproofing trust for sustaining peace’, arguing that an important aspect of futureproofing trust for sustaining peace is to understand how people in the future may organise, build community and solve problems.

She said that the African Leadership Centre (ALC) in Nairobi is working towards building this understanding by focusing its 10-year research agenda on one central question: How will perspectives of peace and the state change among those who will govern the world in 2050?

She also argued that building institutions and norms for future peace requires considering the ground realities of people and places who are often marginalised in global decision-making.

To capture these ground realities, she said the ALC is building a data laboratory, which has large amounts of social media data along with ethnographies of marginalised communities.

Professor Olonisakin: “[The aim is to] observe the complex and dynamic nature of how peace, development, and conflict are interpreted, reimagined, and reinterpreted by different people across age, gender, and social status.”

Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Cynthia Chigwenya, Youth Ambassador for Peace for Southern Africa, also spoke in the open debate.

Watch the full debate on the United Nations website.