Mardiya Siba Yahaya

About

Mardiya Siba Yahaya is a multi-genre technologist, researcher and community movement builder. She runs the Flowers and Gardening Studio, a space where she works with community artists co-creating technologies and archiving knowledge that enhance communal imagination through visual imagery and play. Mardiya’s research investigates how policymakers can embed community sensibilities in AI and innovation policies , supported through Mozilla’s initiative with GIZ African Union. For the most part, she spends her time dissecting Glissant’s opacity as a socio-technical resistance and refusal technique marginalised communities use against visibility-based capture and surveillance.
Previously, she led the cross-regional community of digital rights practitioners at Team Community (Article 19), developing and implementing strategies to advance and weave sustainable movement building. Mardiya has mobilised across regions and languages to strengthen the work of digital rights practitioners. As a fellow at University of San Diego’s Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice, Mardiya created research-based fiction documenting life in surveillance societies, and creative techniques of resistance. Her work has been published with Bloomsbury Press, Feminist Africa, and Chatham House, among other notable publications