Bisset says grief tech is helping people deal with the loss of a loved one and is an emerging trend. In 2016, a man developed an artificial technology app called heareafter.ai after his father died of cancer. The app was born from a question: what do I still want to know about my father before he dies?
The advent of this app gives people the option to mourn the loss of a loved one beyond Facebook albums or 'a dusty photo album,' says Bisset.
"The digital age has made coping with loss complex as digital ghosts remain on internet after someone passes."
Kirsty Bisset, Managing Director - HaveYouHeard
How do these apps work?
These artificial intelligence apps develop chatbot avatars of people's deceased relatives, preserving their memories, allowing the living to communicate with "a digital ghost" of someone who has long passed to help them heal.
While someone is still alive, these apps will allow you to "archive" your loved ones through conversations, interviews and questions, teaching the app's algorithm about the person so when they pass the app is able to answer further questions in their voice and in their likeness so you can have a two-way conversation, digitally.
Bisset highlights that there are ethical questions around these apps...
"It speaks to how we would want to mourn and there are definitely moral and ethical concerns that surround this technology. There are also implications of creating avatars of deceased people without their permission which is also an ethical question."
Kirsty Bisset, Managing Director - HaveYouHeard
Bisset also notes that an app like this might hinder one's grieving process.
"The implications of apps like this is under scrutiny. Is this the right thing to do? It indicates that excessive reliance on an avatar might hinder the ability to adapt to loss and might prolong grieving."
Kirsty Bisset, Managing Director - HaveYouHeard
Humans and technology must work together to avoid a trap where you realise it's technology you're talking to and not the actual person, she suggets.
"It's like a black mirror episode coming to life."
Kirsty Bisset, Managing Director - HaveYouHeard
Bisset notes that this also has implications for your will and testament.
"You would have to state that your identity like your name, voice and face will not exist beyond the physical world in your will. It's called a Digital Do Not Reanimate Clause (DDNR) and might be something to consider in future where things like this is imminent."
University of Brighton alumna receives $50,000 fromElton John AIDS Foundation to improve access to HIV care and education for youth in Uganda.
Caroline Mukebezi, who graduated with an MSc Health Promotion from the University's School of Sports and Health Sciences, received the grant to support her project aimed at improving access to HIV response for vulnerable people – especially adolescents and young girls – in her native Uganda.
With support from the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), the organisation founded by Caroline, Pathway Foundation for Health and Economic Empowerment (PFHEE), will run a two-year project working with community health institutions and local leaders to improve access to HIV testing, reduce stigma associated with the disease and build the capacity of health workers through training and workshops.
Caroline said: "I am excited for the many young girls and boys in Uganda who will benefit from our work thanks to this grant from the Elton John AIDS Foundation. With these funds, we will improve access to HIV/AIDS and Sexual Reproductive Health Rights services. We will also focus on providing mental health support for people living with HIV/AIDS while building the capacity of other local organisations to offer such services".
Ms Mukebezi lost her father at the age of six, and her mother years later to HIV/AIDS. In Uganda, limited access to health information and care contribute to high number of HIV-related deaths annually.
She said: "Losing my parents at an early age, due to our inability to afford treatment and the strained quality of care they received, formed my resolve to significantly contribute to improving the experience of other people living with the disease. University of Brighton gave me the knowledge and skills to translate this passion to support people into a real-life organization, taking into consideration the local context and the policies and laws in my country."
While studying at Brighton, Caroline was a beneficiary of the University of Brighton Forward Bound Scholarship which has supported Health Promotion MSc applicants from low or lower-middle income countries since 2015. The award provides educational funding for health and other professionals who are employed or volunteer in roles where they will be able to influence and shape health promotion practice and policy on their return.
Just a few years after receiving the scholarship, Caroline has gone on to set up her organization which is providing support for young people in Uganda.
She said: "I wouldn't have been able to do all these if not for the Forward Bound scholarship which made it possible for me to come to Brighton to get all this knowledge. The chance to learn, to study and then use that knowledge and put it into practise has greatly impacted me and brought a lot of other opportunities. It has been truly life changing and I don't take it for granted."
"Located in one of the UK's major cities of sanctuary, University of Brighton exposed me to various cultures and experiences which shaped my thinking as well as my personal and professional life. I gained incredible skills in communication, planning, and organizing which have helped my work and my journey to landing this grant," Caroline added.
About the Forward Bound Scholarship
The Forward Bound scholarship is available to Health Promotion MSc applicants from low or lower-middle income countries where similar postgraduate education opportunities are not available. It is intended to support health and other professionals who are employed or who volunteer in roles where they will be able to influence health promotion practice and policy on their return.
The core objective of the scholarship is to empower recipients to use the knowledge and experience they gain from their Masters to return to their country of origin and make a tangible difference to communities through health promotion in a professional and/or voluntary capacity.
The scholarship will fund course fees, travel costs, accommodation, visa, subsistence and health insurance for 12 months – equivalent to a cost of £28,000.
In what has infamously come to be labelled the ‘speech that killed Thomas Sankara’ the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso two months before he was assassinated, he said, “debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa aimed at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules.”
He continued, “debt cannot be repaid ... but if we repay, we are going to die. That’s for sure”. This he said at the OAU summit in Addis Ababa on July 29 1987. At the same gathering, he hinted to not being around for the next summit; because he would likely be taken out by the protagonists of debt for what he had just said.
This low regard for foreign debt nearly four decades after President Sankara’s OAU speech was mirrored by South Africans when they protested the R70 billion [$ 3.7 billion] IMF loan in 2020, and by Kenyans when they petitioned an IMF loan in 2022. In Kenya’s case, the locals were up against the doubling of the eight per cent VAT rate for fuel to 16 per cent which was a condition the international lenders attached to the $2.34 billion loan.
This forced the nationals to sign an online petition demanding the cancellation of the loan because fuel prices shot up straight away. It, therefore, comes as a surprise that on March 6, 2024, when the IMF disbursed $120 million [UGX 464.2 billion] to Uganda under the Extended Credit Facility [ECF]; Ugandans were silent unlike our African counterparts who were up in arms against IMF’s loans because they know something about the international lender that we don’t.
The latest issuance of funds puts the total amount lent to Uganda under ECF since June 2021 to $870 million [UGX 3.3 billion]; not counting the $491.5 million [UGX 1.9 trillion] remitted in May 2020 under the Rapid Credit Facility [RCF] bringing the total sum of loans disbursed by the IMF alone to Uganda in four years to $ 1,361.5 million [UGX 5.2 trillion].
By design, IMF’s ECF loan to Uganda has a grace period of five and half years with a final maturity of 10 years and is awarded at zero interest, which makes it reasonable on paper. In spite of that, the international lender’s funds come with structural conditions that are reminiscent of the World Bank’s structural adjustment programs [SAPs] that have left many low-income economies like Uganda impoverished to this day.
For example, in Egypt on March 6, 2024, the country had to devalue it’s Pound against the dollar, which led to a currency loss of 38 per cent, on top of increasing lending rates for banks for the country to secure $8 billion in funding. Egypt’s IMF loan deal had stagnated since December 2022, being that the country had insisted on keeping its pound at a tightly managed rate.
Devaluation of the Egyptian pound reduces the cost of Egypt’s exports for Western countries; in the process reducing household incomes because locals get less for their goods. The increment in interest rates makes credit hard to come by for local businesses, thereby asphyxiating them.
Presently, Pakistan is negotiating IMF loans with strict conditions placed by the international lender to impose a capital gains tax on cryptocurrencies and listed securities; not to mention hiking gas, and electricity prices. This begs the question: What did Uganda give up to access the funding?
UGANDA’S LIKELY TRADE-OFF FOR IMF’S LOAN
On the day Uganda bagged the loan, March 6, 2024, Bank of Uganda [BoU] announced a central bank rate [CBR] of 10 per cent from 9.5 per cent, and a bank rate of 14 per cent. The CBR is an indicator to banks on the direction prices are taking, a rise in it signals to banks that inflation is imminent, and they, therefore, raise their lending rates.
On the other hand, the bank rate is the rate at which BoU lends to banks. When BoU lends to banks at a high rate, banks transfer this burden to their customers by increasing their lending rates. This is going to drive many businesses to the ground, and lead to the loss of jobs.
The central bank’s move is dodgy because at the height of inflation in Uganda between March and April 2022, the CBR was 6.5 per cent, and the bank rate 9.5 per cent. Headline inflation then was reported at 5.2 per cent, and core inflation at 4.7 per cent, as opposed to 3.4 per cent currently for core, and headline inflation.
Even though the shilling has depreciated due to the issuance of the infrastructure bond in Kenya, this shock is only short-term and if left alone, would correct itself in a trice. For that reason there was no need to increase the CBR and bank rate for a temporary shock unless of course it was strongly advised by the IMF.
Concerning this, Kenneth Egesa, director of Communications BoU, had this to say: “The CBR focuses on the future inflation outlook, not just the present, due to the long timeframe of monetary policy effects. With high inflation predicted, tightening measures were needed in March 2024 to address this elevated risk”.
Having said that, BoU’s monetary policy report for February 2024 states, “Going forward, inflation could fall faster than expected due to stronger- than-expected pass-through from lower fuel prices which would lead central banks easing their policy earlier than expected”.
The report continues to allude to the only possible disruptions to the downward trend of inflation being geopolitical tensions, and supply chain disruptions; none of which have happened in the past month which directly contradicts Egesa’s gloomy foresight about inflation.
DOES UGANDA CREDIBLY SATISFY IMF’S LOAN CONDITIONS?
When I reached out to the secretary to the treasury and permanent secretary [PSST] of the ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Ramathan Ggoobi as one who sat in on the IMF meetings about which economic policy adjustments Uganda agreed to prior to the disbursement of the loan, my query was met with crickets. Silence.
The ECF and RCF loan funds are IMF schemes targeted at countries with chronic balance of payment problems, problems that are structural in nature. And for that reason, these programs come with structural conditions and policy adjustments to “ensure that the country’s finances will be strong enough to repay the loan...” states IMF.
The conditions the IMF bases its financing on is prior performance in: governance, domestic arrears and external debt, anti-corruption and rule of law, fiscal revenue/tax administration, and so on. In all the mentioned categories Uganda has put up a lamentable show for the longest time.
In the Auditor General’s report 2023, Uganda’s debt-to-GDP stands at 52.7 per cent up from 48.8 per cent in the financial year [FY] 2020/21, an increment of four per cent in three years. IMF recommends 50 per cent as the point of safety. This is accompanied by a low tax-to-GDP ratio of 14 per cent: 16 per cent is the sub-Saharan standard.
In FY 2022/23, “tax revenue was below its target for the financial year by UGX 22.87 billion” [$5.6 million] stated the Macroeconomic and Fiscal Performance report FY 2022/23. On top of its tax problems, Uganda is popular for bad governance with no established policies; or, a general lack of proper implementation where policy exists.
The government has failed to put in place working mechanisms to check those in positions of power. As is, the establishment in Uganda has failed to deliver services to its natives because of a starless governance structure.
On human rights violations, Uganda sits in the pantheon of countries with the lowest regard for its citizen’s rights. Illegal arrests, detentions without trial, political persecution, and wholesale killings are not a rarity in the country. When this is matched with high levels of corruption at all levels of administration in Uganda; it’s difficult to understand how Uganda passed the IMF’s governance, and human rights test to qualify for a loan!
When I asked Tatiana Mossot, a press officer of the IMF, to explain why the ECF loan was disbursed to Uganda despite the country’s frightful image she wrote, “The quantitative performance criteria against which Uganda’s progress was gauged are macroeconomic in nature and can be found on page 41 of the document” [Uganda: Fifth Review under the ECF Arrangement and Request for Modification of Performance Criteria – Press Release].
“The reforms that were implemented can be found in the Tables on pages 42-44”. “A favourable outcome of the anticorruption agenda, as you may know, has been the recent de-listing of Uganda from the FATF grey list” she added.
That said, some of the implemented reforms’ reports she referred to didn’t appear on the ministry of Finance website like: the report on penalties for officers responsible for unauthorized spending commitments and actions taken to enforce compliance.
Another corruption report she cited isn’t tenable because it was compiled by the government — Prevalence of Corruption in Uganda 2022/2023 report. One doesn’t expect the government to unbiasedly critique itself on a topic as polarising as corruption.
All things considered, Uganda’s problems are not going to be solved by money but by good leadership; and the IMF knows that. But by continuing to award Uganda loans on grounds they realistically don’t qualify for; the IMF is imprisoning Ugandans, future and present in debt. Therefore, it’s about time the natives paid attention not only to the regime, but those financing it. By MARK KIDAMBA, The Observer
Standard Media Group Managing Director Broadcast Joe Munene during a conference in Nairobi on February 2021 PHOTO WILBERFORCE OKWIRI Copied to clipboard
The Standard Group on Wednesday, March 27 refuted claims that the organisation was facing bankruptcy and would be shutting down.
In a statement issued by the Group’s Acting Chief Executive Officer, (C.E.O), Joe Munene the media house stated that the information circulating online was purporting a false narrative.
“The Standard Group PLC wishes to inform its audiences, customers, suppliers, staff, shareholders and all other stakeholders that information circulating on social media touching on the integrity of the Company, its Management and Staff is fake”, read the statement.
Further, the media house confirmed that their services across all their broadcasting platforms would continue running uninterrupted.
According to the statement, the online attacks against the media house are an attempt to derail them from discharging their journalistic mandate.
“These are malicious attacks, whose intention is to derail our unflinching commitment to the mission of journalism and the pursuit of the public interest,” stated Munene.
“Further, despite the hostile business environment facing the media industry, caused largely by the problem of pending bills and a slowdown in the overall economy, we continue to transform our business to best serve our customers, explained Standard Group.
Earlier on in the day, social media users alleged that the Mombasa-Road media house was packing up and would be liquidated.
Adding on to the false claims, the section of social media users also proceeded to create a fake internal memo purporting to be from the Group Managing Director.
The group, however, has been facing financial problems with employees from the institution alleging that they had not received salaries for periods dating up to eight months. By HELLEN NJOROGE, Kenyans.co.ke
Operatives of the Ilorin Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have arrested five persons for possession and conveyance of three truckloads of assorted solid minerals mined without licence.
Disclosing this in a statement on Tuesday, EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale, said that the suspects include Dauda Suleiman, Quadri Oladimeji, Abubakar Alhassan, Anas Sanusi, and Auwal Garba.
He said the suspects are truck drivers except for Quadri Oladimeji and Auwal Garba, who are truck boys
“Their arrest, which was effected along Maraba road, Ilorin Kwara state and Ogbomosho, Oyo state between March 21 – 22, 2024, followed credible intelligence and days of surveillance,” the statement read.
“The suspects were arrested while conveying solid minerals suspected to be marble stone, white powder, lithium, and lepidolite to Shagamu and Alakija in Ogun and Lagos State for commercial purposes without licence. They claim to be hired.
“Details of the trucks recovered from the suspects showed that Dauda, Abubakar, and Anas were each carrying a truck with registration numbers JJJ 206 YG, Lagos; T24413 LA, Lagos and KNT 635 XP, Niger, respectively.”
This is not the first arrest to be made by the anti-graft agency on those engaged in illegal mining in the country.
On February 5, the EFCC arrested 41 persons over suspected illegal mining activities in Ilorin and impounded 12 truckloads of assorted minerals mined without license. The latest arrest brings to 46 the number of persons arrested, and 15 vehicles ceased in the last month over similar offences. The statement said that the suspects would be arraigned in court after the conclusion of investigations. By Abdulhakeem Garba, Channels Television
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