Nagla Rizk is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo’s School of Business. Her research area is the economics of knowledge, technology and development. Her work focuses on digital technologies and inclusion, zooming in on the governance of data and Artificial Intelligence, gender, gig work and inclusive growth in Egypt the Middle East and Africa.
Her publications include “Fairwork Egypt Ratings 2021: Labour Standards in the Gig Economy”, “Artificial Intelligence and Inequality in the Middle East” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and “The State of Open Data in the Middle East and North Africa” in The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons.
She leads the Egypt team within the Fairwork project network led by the Oxford Internet Institute. She also leads the MENA hub for Feminist AI research and the North Africa hub of the Open African Innovation Research Partnership (Open AIR).
She founded the Open Data for Development Node for the Middle East and North Africa, and is a member of the Expert Advisory Committee of the Global Index on Responsible Artificial Intelligence. and of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Feminist AI Research (FAIR) network.
Nagla served on the Data Governance Working Group of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) and is a member of the Paris Peace Forum Digital Rights in Society Working Group on Algorithmic Governance: Global South and North Convergences and Divergences. She is also a member of the Open for Good Alliance, Inclusive AI commons with localized data.
At A2K4D, she leads four research tracks. These are: 1) Governing responsible data and AI for development in MENA 2) Data, new work (including gig work) and inclusion in MENA 3) Feminist AI post Covid in MENA, and 4) Alternative metrics for assessing innovation in Africa.
She is main contributor to Egypt’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, launched July 2021, and is a member of the Technical Secretariat of Egypt’s National Council for Artificial Intelligence. She has a record of policy impact in the area of open source technologies and regulation of ride sharing in Egypt, and advocacy for the right to information.
Nagla is a returning Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and Affiliated Faculty at Harvard Law School’s Copyrightx course. She is also Affiliated Fellow of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and Associate Member of the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Law, Technology and Society.
She taught at Columbia University, Yale Law School and the University of Toronto.
