AI & DigitalPractices
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Practice I — AI and Digital Transformation
Technology decides who gets to act.
Digital transformation is not procurement. It is a redistribution of who can act, who is legible to the system, and who decides. We build the capability — and the judgement about what not to automate.
The practice
Capability, not software
We work with institutions, governments, regional bodies and development agencies on digital readiness and AI capability — from process audits and multi-year roadmaps to degree programmes and product design.
Most digital transformation programmes in this region fail the same way: a platform arrives, the workflow does not change, and the institution now has a licence fee and a dependency. We start from the work itself — what staff actually do, what they are accountable for, and where technology lightens load rather than adding it.
The same rigour applies to AI. We are deploying emerging methods, from machine learning to metagenomics, in West African health security and governance — and we are equally clear about where an AI system would import surveillance logics an institution has no mandate to hold.
Who we work with
Regional & continental institutions Governments & governance bodies Development agencies Universities & training institutions Financial-inclusion providers Civil society undergoing digitisationPractice lead
Who runs this practice
Nonso Jideofor
Founder, Present Lab · Lead, AI and Digital Transformation Practice
Expert in strategic foresight and human-centred design; alumnus of the UNHCR Innovation Service and co-facilitator of UNDP digital-fitness programmes. His work focuses on Equity DNA and on retiring regressive humanitarian terminologies.
Co-author of The Power Shifting Shuffle (Fund for Global Human Rights, 2025) and the Locally Led Development in Civil Society co-design and prototyping toolkit (2025).
What we do
Four lines of work
Digital transformation roadmaps
Process audits and multi-year digital roadmaps for institutions such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights — supporting uptake of technologies that lighten workload and increase digital citizen engagement, sequenced against real institutional capacity.
Digital fitness programmes
Partnering with development agencies to raise institutional digital readiness, including capacity programmes in Somalia with UNDP — assessing where an organisation actually is before deciding what it should adopt.
AI capability & curriculum
Designing and launching AI education pathways, including a first-of-its-kind Master’s in AI programme in Liberia with UNDP and Intel — building a domestic talent base rather than importing one.
Digital product & service design
Human-centred product design for services that have to work in low-bandwidth, low-literacy and trust-constrained contexts — including digital product design for AccèsBanque in Madagascar.
Method
Readiness before roadmap
The sequence we hold to, whatever the technology in question.
- Audit the work, not the stack. Map what staff actually do, where time goes, and which bottlenecks are technical versus political. Most are political.
- Score readiness honestly. Digital fitness is a diagnosis, not a pitch. An institution that is not ready for a platform should be told so before it signs.
- Design with, not for. Human-centred design with the people who will operate the system daily, in the conditions they actually work in.
- Build the domestic capability. Curriculum, training and transfer, so the institution is not renting the skill it needs permanently.
- Design for second-order consequences. Ask what the system makes visible, to whom, and what follows from that — before it ships.
Evidence & footprint
Where the work has run
| Country | Project | Partners |
|---|---|---|
| The Gambia | ACHPR digital transformation roadmap — process audit and multi-year roadmap for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights | EPD, ACHPR |
| Liberia | National AI Master’s programme launch — a first-of-its-kind degree pathway | UNDP, Intel |
| Somalia | Digital fitness & governance programme — institutional digital readiness and capacity transfer | UNDP |
| Madagascar | Digital product design for AccèsBanque — service design for financial inclusion | AccèsBanque |
| Nigeria | Metagenomic and AI-assisted surveillance scoping in support of the health security practice | FMOH & research partners |
Work with this practice
Start with a readiness audit
Before the roadmap, the platform or the model — an honest read on what your institution can absorb, and what it should refuse.
Request a scoping call See the digital fitness frameworkElsewhere at Present Lab
Four practices. One method.
Each practice runs its own team, partners and body of evidence — sharing only the studio’s methodological spine.