Kim Harrisberg

The #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, #FeesMustFall protests in South Africa and the #RejectFinanceBill2024 protests in Kenya all have one thing in common - the organising, chanting and marching were led by young people.

In Uganda, youth protesters are staging rallies outside parliament against alleged corruption and human rights abuses by leaders, inspired by similar high-profile protests in Kenya against an unpopular finance bill.

When Shireen Gouws heard about a new hotline advertised in the community centre where she works in the small town of Laingsburg in South Africa, she was quick to spread the word.

Finally, she thought, people could have their say about renewable projects in their area and make sure they were reaping the benefits of the transition to green energy.

When the Nigerian government announced plans in April to develop a multilingual AI tool to boost digital inclusion across the West African nation, 28-year-old computer science student Lwasinam Lenham Dilli was thrilled.

Dilli had struggled to scrape datasets from the internet to build a large language model (LLM), used to power AI chatbots, in his native Hausa language as part of his final-year project at university.

From deepfake Donald Trumps endorsing key contenders, to claims the vote was rigged, South Africa is awash with online disinformation as political players thrash out a coalition deal after an historic election.

Digital activists want to monitor who is behind all the post-vote propaganda, but say they are hampered by high costs and high-walled platforms: the sort of challenges their Western counterparts rarely face.

Growing up surrounded by the towering smokestacks of coal-fired power stations, 22-year-old Siya Mokoena's life is inextricably linked to the coal industry that dominates his hometown of Emalahleni in South Africa's eastern province of Mpumalanga.

Like many in Emalahleni, generations of Mokoena's family have worked in the coal sector. His father, a miner, was laid off in March when his mine was shut down.

Right-wing libertarian Javier Milei won Argentina's landmark election on Sunday as he tapped into voter anger with the political mainstream - including rival Sergio Massa's dominant Peronist party, with both sides turning to AI during the fractious election campaign.

In the final weeks of campaigning, Milei published a fabricated image depicting Massa as an old-fashioned communist in military garb, while Massa's team distributed AI-generated images portraying Milei and his team as enraged zombies and pirates.

Every day, Sabrina Walter answers 50 to 150 messages on her social media channels from South African women who have survived abuse but need help to get justice, get safe or get back on their feet. With little support in real life, they have turned to the virtual world.

Walter is the founder of non-profit Women For Change (WFC), which has grown from having a few hundred followers online when it was created in 2016 to reaching over 10 million people per month across its Facebook, X, TikTok and Instagram pages in 2023.

The Liesbeek River snakes down from Cape Town's iconic Table Mountain for just 9 km (5 miles), but nevertheless has become the focus of a battle between retail giant Amazon, Indigenous groups, green activists and land claimants.

Land is an extremely emotive issue in South Africa. Nearly 400 years of Dutch and British colonial rule and four decades of apartheid saw waves of land grabs and mass evictions of Black, Indian and mixed-race people to create white-only areas.

Voice actor Armando Plata does not recall promoting a shopping mall in Bogota, narrating a porn movie or advertizing a big bank. Yet his voice comes over loud and clear: schmoozing, sighing and selling with neither permission nor payment.

It was the mild, robotic twang - rather than worry over any memory lapse - that alerted Plata to the fact his voice had been quietly cloned via artificial intelligence, robbing the veteran actor of his key asset, artistic choice and vocal rights.

Philanthropists are stepping in to ensure vulnerable workers and their communities are not left behind when developing nations agree multi-billion-dollar climate deals to shutter fossil-fuel power plants and ramp up green energy investments.

Last year, Vietnam and Indonesia joined South Africa in clinching a "just energy transition partnership" (JETP) - a funding package from wealthy governments and banks to help emerging economies phase out coal while creating green jobs - followed by Senegal this June.