Kenya

The inaugural AfriCHI conference in 2016 had the theme “Kujenga madaraja, Kubomoa vizuizi”, in Kiswahili or “Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers” in English. This recognised that the conference was hosted in Nairobi, Kenya and sought to link people working in different disciplines and sectors undertaking HCI in Africa and increase the limited opportunities, at the time, for Africans to participate in international conferences. The theme also played on building bridges within Africa among African researchers as well as with international researchers and attracted 105 authors from 22 different countries half of which were from Africa. AfriCHI’16 had classical HCI conference tracks of long papers, notes, posters, panels, workshops, courses, a design challenge and a doctoral and masters consortium. It also experimented with ‘Gumzo, New dialogues for HCI’. Gumzo is Kiswahili for a ‘friendly conversation’ and the track sought to showcase original, diverse oral performances and multimedia productions and include languages used in Africa other than English.