AfOx Insaka
The Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx) Insaka is a gathering for sharing ideas and knowledge about Africa-focused research. AfOx invites speakers from varied disciplines and academic backgrounds to present their work and ideas, followed by discussions and networking. You can watch our previous Insakas here.
AfOx is hosting an Insaka on February 6 2026, from 17:30-19:00 PM UK time at the Hub, Kellogg College, University of Oxford. The event will also be live-streamed on the AfOx YouTube Channel.
Here's a preview of our past Insakas
Global Herstoriography: an African perspective through the lens of plants
Global Herstoriography: an African perspective through the lens of plants
How can the knowledge of plants held by indigenous communities help us to rethink the role of African women as knowledge producers? How can these forms of deep knowledge help us address crises such as climate change? An example of long-survived feminist indigenous knowledge is the Khoe ‘Ausi’ intergenerational ecological and medicinal knowledge around the wetlands on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape in South Africa. During the colonial period of the Cape of Good Hope, ‘Ausi’ knowledge holders were superficially described as the ‘kruidvrou’ (woman of herbs) in early European travelers’ accounts. The matrifocal globally interconnected and metaphorical ‘Ausi’ knowledge of environmental sustainability and medicinal practices is an illustration of Africa’s deep-time interconnectedness. In this presentation I examine how recent feminist and decolonial approaches to the study of Africa offer us an innovative opportunity to reclaim these marginalized forms of knowledge. To do this we must address the limitations of Eurocentric approaches to knowledge production and research methodologies about Africa’s deep pasts.
June Bam is Professor in Education and director of the Centre for Education Rights, University of Johannesburg. She is author of the award-winning monograph Ausi Told Me: Why Cape Herstoriographies Matter (2021, Fanele). June has previously worked as special government education adviser for South Africa and has held positions in teaching and research for several years with (amongst others) the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past: University of York, and Stanford University. She taught at the University of Cape Town for many years, where she also held the position of Associate Professor in African Feminism. She has led research projects in her research area which involve various global universities.
Predicting Soil Erosion Risk and Sustainable Land Use in Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains Using AI and Climate Geospatial Data
AI has the potential ability to understanding environmental change by helping us analyse large datasets and detecting patterns. In this paper, I focus on how artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, and climate data can be combined to predict soil erosion in Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains a vital region for smallholder spice farming. These landscapes are increasingly at risk due to deforestation, poor land use decisions, and climate stress. By using deep learning techniques like CNN and LSTM, the project aims to develop an interactive GIS tool to offer guidance for sustainbale land management.
Dr. Theofrida J. Maginga is a Lecturer at Sokoine University of Agriculture and a Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Faculty Fellowship, specializing in IoT and AI applications for precision agriculture to strengthen crop health and disease resilience for sustainable food systems in Tanzania. She holds a Ph.D. in Internet of Things from the University of Rwanda and a Master’s in Information and Communication Science and Engineering from the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology.
Dr. Maginga is the lead developer of MkulimaGPT, a Swahili based AI chatbot that supports smallholder farmers in maize disease diagnosis and farm management. Her research advances AI solutions to enhance crop productivity, with support from the Gates Foundation. She has also contributed to Geo-ICT project on capacity building in Tanzanian higher education. Her currents project falls under Seed Grant for New African Principal Investigators (SG-NAPI) from The World Academy of Science and Masakhane Masakhane African Languages Hub’s for Swahili and Sukuma Natural Language Processing.
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