In October last year, Chatham House and the office of Denmark’s Tech Ambassador joined forces to launch a student essay competition for the best short article on emerging technology and diplomacy. Entrants were asked to set out a technology-related topic, existing or predicted, and explain in 1,000 words how it could be addressed in a diplomatic context.
The judges declared Stefania Grottola, of the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva, as the winner for her article on the role of Artificial Intelligence in cyber-enabled elections.
They also commended the work of Garnett Achieng, a student at the African Leadership University, Kigali, Rwanda. In her essay, set in 2025, she discussed how surveillance and lack of privacy could potentially kill social media activism in countries such as Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria where it had been flourishing.
