Yasmin Ahmed
Femtech Law Initiative - Director of Programs
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Yasmin Ahmed is a lawyer and the Co-founder and Director of Programs at FemTech Law Initiative, a women- and youth-led organization working at the intersection of law, technology, and social justice. she champions digital inclusion, literacy, and safety, advocating for an equitable and secure online environment for women and children in Uganda.
At FemTech Law Initiative, Yasmin leads initiatives that empower communities through legal literacy, online safety education, and policy advocacy.
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Invisible by Design: How Gender Bias Is Built into Digital Systems
Digital systems are often framed as neutral, objective, and efficient. In practice, many digital technologies reproduce and amplify existing gender inequalities through the data they rely on, the assumptions embedded in their design, and the contexts in which they are deployed. Gender bias in digital systems is not accidental; it is structural, cumulative, and frequently invisible to those who hold power over technology design and governance.
This session explores how gender bias is embedded across the digital ecosystem, including data collection, algorithmic decision-making, platform governance, digital identification systems, online safety tools, health technologies, and digital public infrastructure. It examines how women in the Global South are rendered invisible or harmed by technologies that fail to account for gendered realities.
Using an intersectional feminist lens, the session highlights how race, class, geography, disability, age, and migration status deepen digital exclusion. Through concrete examples and interactive discussion, participants will unpack how supposedly “neutral” design choices produce unequal outcomes, who is excluded, and who benefits. The session centres feminist and rights-based approaches to reimagining digital design, governance, and accountability.
Protecting Children Online in Africa: Bridging Policy, Practice, and Accountability
As children across Africa increasingly access digital technologies for learning, communication, and participation, they are also exposed to growing online risks, including abuse, exploitation, harmful content, and data misuse. While many African countries have adopted laws, policies, and strategies aimed at protecting children online, significant gaps remain between policy commitments and the realities of implementation, enforcement, and accountability.
This session will examine the current child online safety landscape in Africa, focusing on the disconnect between legal and policy frameworks, institutional capacity, and lived experiences of children. It will bring together different stakeholders to assess what is working, what is failing, and why. Key discussions will address government responsibility, platform accountability, and the role of schools, parents, and communities in safeguarding children online.
Through a rights-based and child-centred lens, the session will highlight practical approaches to strengthening coordination, accountability, and implementation while ensuring that child online safety measures respect children’s rights to privacy, access to information, and participation in digital spaces.
Digital Sovereignty from Below: Grassroots Accountability Claims in Digital ID Systems Across East
As digital identity infrastructures become central to state-building and digital sovereignty
agendas across Africa, national strategies increasingly position digital ID as a foundation for inclusion, service delivery, and economic participation. Yet across East Africa, grassroots evidence shows that sovereignty is being constructed about communities rather than with them, resulting in persistent forms of administrative exclusion, opaque decision-making, and limited accountability over data practices. This panel asks how digital
sovereignty is experienced, contested, and renegotiated from below when identity systems become prerequisites for recognition, mobility, and access to public goods. Drawing on
field-based perspectives from civil society and community advocates, the discussion
examines:
(1) how design and roll-out processes create new forms of “governance without consent”;
(2) the accountability gap between policy promise and front-line implementation; and
(3) community-led mechanisms for rights-claiming, transparency, and oversight. By comparing Kenya ( Maisha Namba), Uganda (Ndaga Muntu), and Tanzania’s NIDA
reforms, the session situates digital ID politics within broader questions of digital sovereignty,
infrastructure governance, and citizen–state trust. It aims to move the debate beyond abstract
legal frameworks toward grounded accountability mechanisms that enable meaningful
participation at the point where people interface with the state through data.
Yasmin Ahmed
Femtech Law Initiative - Director of Programs
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