Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika

CV

Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika is a postdoctoral researcher at ZeMKI and affiliated with the Lab “Platform Governance, Media, and Technology” (Prof. Dr. Katzenbach). At ZeMKI, he works on the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project Fostering Digital Pan-Africanism in AI Governance through Evidence and Action (AI PAN-AFRICANISM), where he contributes to research on African AI governance, digital sovereignty, and democratic regional cooperation.

He also holds a research fellowship at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), where his work focuses on AI labour, platform governance, and decolonial approaches to technology. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across several African countries, his research examines the labour conditions, infrastructures, and power relations that underpin AI systems, with particular attention to Africa and the Global South.

Adio was a 2025–2026 Mila AI Policy Fellow at Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, where he developed the project Governing AI From Below: Worker-Centred Frameworks for Global Algorithmic Safety and Accountability. He has also held research appointments and fellowships at the Weizenbaum Institute and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS).

He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS), and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Zimbabwe.

Main research areas

• Political economy of AI
• AI Ethics and Governance
• Platform Governance
• Digital Labour
• Decolonial Technology Studies

Memberships

• Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
• International Network on Digital Labour (INDL)
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Selected recent publications

Abdelkadir, Nuredin Ali, Tianling Yang, Shivani Kapania, Kauna Ibrahim Malgwi, Fasica Berhane Gebrekidan, Adio-Adet Dinika, Elaine O. Nsoesie, Milagros Miceli, and Stevie Chancellor (2026). Beyond Content Exposure: Systemic Factors Driving Moderators’ Mental Health Crisis in Africa. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26), Barcelona, Spain.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791639
https://nuredinali.github.io/papers/Beyond_Content_Exposure_Systemic_Factors_Driving_Moderators_Mental_Health_Crisis_in_Africa_CHI_2026.pdf

Dinika, Adio-Adet Tichafara (2025). Navigating labour’s labyrinth: Developing a typology of platform work in Sub-Saharan Africa. Platforms & Society.
https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251318084

Miceli, Milagros, Adio-Adet Dinika, Krystal Kauffman, Camilla Salim Wagner, Laurenz Sachenbacher, Alex Hanna, and Timnit Gebru (2025). Methodological Considerations for Centering Workers’ Epistemic Authority in AI Research. Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 8(2), 1698–1710.
https://doi.org/10.1609/aies.v8i2.36667

Dinika, Adio-Adet Tichafara (2024). Trapped in the Matrix: Algorithmic Control and Worker Dispossession in the African Platform Economy. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 5(1).
https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/5.1.3

Dinika, Adio-Adet Tichafara (2024). A critical analysis of Rwanda’s Digital skills and entrepreneurship training toward solving youth unemployment. Journal of Business and Enterprise Development.
https://doi.org/10.47963/jobed.v12i.1526

Dinika, Adio-Adet Tichafara (2022). Preparing African youths for the future of work: The case of Rwanda. Digital Policy Studies, 1(2).
https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/dps/article/view/2276