S02 E01: Exploring Benin's rising digital economy

In the last episode of Season 2 we visit Mexico City to explore the potentials and challenges of sustainable digital entrepreneurship to mitigate climate change.

How can digital skills and technologies be trained and implemented in remote regions where the rainforest is of particular importance for local development?

Digital platforms are fundamentally changing the world of work. While the platform economy opens immense opportunities for flexible, gainful and convenient entrepreneurship, the precarious livelihoods of workers and service providers often remain unaddressed.

In this episode we shine a light on the transformation of a former military camp into the Innovation and Training Park (ITP) Prizren in Kosovo, an aspiring hub for innovation, economic development and digital transformation in the city and wider region. We discuss the connection between spatial development, innovation and digitalisation at the ITP with local experts.

At the SENIA, Benin’s first AI conference, our team had the opportunity to talk to local experts about the possibilities of digitalisation for the improvement of the agricultural sector and its working conditions. Christian Grauvogel, Marie Blüml and Georg von Richthofen travelled to Benin in July 2022 to discuss the opportunities and risks of applying Artificial Intelligence in sustainable entrepreneurship in Benin and Francophone West and Central Africa. They had the opportunity to interview Seth Ayim, operational manager of the international NGO TechnoServe, and Theodore Gboyou, data scientist and regional manager of the digital platform Digital Rice Africa in Benin.

In a collaborative project researchers from Oxford and Berlin developed an index as the first economic indicator of industry-specific risk assessments related to Covid-19, based on financial disclosures of US companies. The index can provide valuable real-time information about economic risks associated with the pandemic, and it has already been featured in Oxford University News, the Washington Post, and the Wirtschaftswoche. In today's special episode we welcome the data scientists Dr. Fabian Stephany and Dr. Fabian Braesemann from the University of Oxford. The two speak with HIIG Ph.D. student Bronwen Deacon about their recent work on the CoRisk-Index. We look forward to your feedback on the episode. Please feel free to provide comments and let us know whether you would like to hear more about Social Data Science research in the future.

How do you build Digital Momentum? How do you stay visible? As the music industry is changing, big music labels are reinventing their branding strategy. This podcast explores the resulting consequences in terms of power-relations and digital flows. Lorenz Grünewald-Schukalla is a project manager in the project team Third Engagement Report, where he deals with questions of civic engagement in the digital world. Besides that he is researching the digital mediatization of music business and music culture. Therefore his Ph.D. project is about the changing relations of consumer brands and music from a media and communications perspective. He is managing director of the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research.

HIIG researcher Jessica Schmeiss is talking to Julia Hoxha about the collection and monitoring of medical data. Julia Hoxha is a former postdoctoral research scientist in Medical Informatics at Columbia University and co-founder and CEO of Zana, an AI-based health assistant. It is available via app, wearables and a platform, that can directly answer questions about health via voice input and enables continuous monitoring of medical factors for both patient and doctors. The episode is part of the "Demystifying AI in Entrepreneurship" project at HIIG.

Wolfgang Schulz studied law and mathematics and is now an expert on media law and algorithmic decision taking. He is the director of the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Hans-Bredow-Institute in Hamburg and also advises the European Council on intermediaries – such as social media platforms, search engines and micro blogging services – and human rights. In this episode, he explains the difficulties of regulating intermediaries that increasingly can be seen as hybrids between state and society.

HIIG researcher Jessica Schmeiss interviews Uli Erxleben (Hypatos) on how exactly the startup uses deep learning automation technology for document processing and how this frees up some of our time. The episode is part of the "Demystifying AI in Entrepreneurship" project at HIIG.