"A future where human dignity, justice, peace, kindness, care, and rights and freedoms for all serve as the north stars that guide AI development and use is possible, but that future can’t appear out of thin air and without intentional tireless work, continual dialogues, and most importantly, confronting ugly realities including big tech and government use of AI and infrastructure to power genocide and enable mass surveillance. The Declaration we produced and presented to Pope Leo XIV is an important move towards this future."

"Dr Aster is an outstanding and exemplary teacher and a good role model who pushes her students to aspire to greater heights while lending them every possible support within her means."

"When I face a challenge, I always find a way. I’m the kind of person who never gives up."

"I was so sympathetic to those people, It was in grade 4. My Amharic teacher asked us what we wanted to be – I said I should be a nurse so I can treat these people."

"Globally, there are very few women scientists who are advancing to the highest levels. The pipeline is leaking, and it leaks most at the top."

"We are in a society where nobody trusts that women can do it, it’s so challenging here. There’s the family burden, the social burden, and of course one’s career. Maybe it’s the way I was raised in the eastern part of Ethiopia."

"From birth they need equal opportunities to help them understand that their intrinsic value is the same as men. Education is key, even though they are expected to follow in their mothers’ footsteps and perform household chores for their entire lives. It’s working. Just last week we awarded 390 girls with above a 3.5 grade point average. They will go to university. If a girl is given an equal footing, she will find her own space and voice in life."

"In the long run, stronger women create stronger communities, stronger women create a stronger nation, and stronger women create a stronger Africa."

"I am from them. I speak from reality. I touch their reality."

"There is no prescription. You make a commitment, then everything you do speaks to you if you are willing to listen. For social change, you must go to the people, to really listen to them and learn from them. It is all about commitment. As a young girl when I spoke to elders, I had to look at their feet, not their faces. As an adult, I stood in front of a congregation of 800 men, women and children. I said female genital mutilation is not prescribed in the Bible or the Koran. So where did the practice come from? Why are we ‘correcting’ God’s work? Everything is contextual."

"I will keep doing it whether you put me in jail, or you kill me. I'll die doing what I believe."

"Yes, I could have had a better house and gone jogging on the beach or gone to a spa every weekend, But is that what life is all about? Could I have stayed there knowing my sisters were being cut and abducted and turned into servants?"

"I tell them my own story—how I grew up, went to school, how I struggled, and how I was mutilated."

"When speaking to women about equality, it was a total awakening. When they said they have no recourse if their husbands beat them, I explained their constitutional, legal and human rights. We learned how to link the political, economic and social problems that affect women’s lives. They have the capacity to change. But real change must happen within communities. Everyone must teach each other and learn that what is good for women and girls is good for the community."

"Daddy, you lived your time. This is our period, our children’s period. We don’t want to kill our children. I hope you are wise enough to accept that."

"Women were regarded as no better than the cows they milked, My mother’s life was a nightmare. I don’t know how she survived. She was a very intelligent, very wise woman, but all her life she was abused and beaten – for nothing. She had her back stooped, her legs broken, her jaw broken, even though she did everything right."

"I have always been a person who speaks up about things that matter. To me, what has always mattered in addition to patient care and research and teaching, is social justice. At Michigan, a university where social justice is core value, I was able to learn how much can be accomplished through collaboration with people in every corner of the university."

"Professor Ryan’s course helped shape how I think about bioethics in my day-to-day work and the career path I’ve ultimately chosen to follow. The students at SIU are the future doctors and lawyers who will determine the landscape of health care and justice in our country. They will inevitably be faced with daily ethical quandaries that will have real impact on whether people live or die, whether they thrive or struggle. That is a tremendous amount of power."

"I am deeply honored to join the extraordinary GH5050 Advisory Council that is guiding the work of a small but mighty GH5050 team working relentlessly to make gender equality the norm through evidence, action, and accountability."

"Explore how our privilege, identity and power shape inequality and encourage students to tap into their humanity first and foremost when faced with decisions that can either widen or narrow those inequalities."

"I used to constantly find myself at the office late at night and challenged by transport hurdles while heading to my home. I used to feel unsafe while taking a taxi…the driver also asks you to pay more than two times the price they charge in a day."

"Thank you Dr. Artist Tewodros Kassahun for supporting our effort to build the creative economy for the generation to come."

"I believes we can grow as a continent regardless of our several challenges and barriers, to disrupt the tech scene on a global scale."

"Women-owned business are growing in number; now we need more young girls to access the finances to make their creative ideas happen.""

"Who can solve the problem of a female if she cannot tell you the problem, and find her own solution?"

"The boys imagine more, they want to do something that’s big and inspired, the girls they really want to help their community from the core."

"Unless you really are in the industry, there is no one to look up to in technology."

"Parents have an expectation of what you should be — if you’re a good student, you’re a doctor, you’re not an engineer or in the computer science field... They haven’t seen any female being in STEM and being successful."

"The biggest thing we have in Africa is a young generation. So if we train the young generation in tech, we’ll be able to build something that is everlasting."

"But the sad thing is, even if they want to, they won’t be able to apply it after they finish their high school education."

"Teaching young girls coding and seeing them become confident and inspired reminded me of how I felt when I started coding."

"More than that, it’s about equipping kids to cope in the 21st century,It’s about problem solving, analytical thinking and self-learning, as well as digital literacy. It means understanding how the internet works, how to get information from it, how to identify wrong and false information, how to keep your privacy and make sure your data is not being used. We think these are really important lessons, especially in this day and age."

"Ethiopia’s youth have no lack of ideas, energy or ambition,but they can’t fulfil their potential alone. What we see in Ethiopia is a lack of co-creation centres where like-minded people can come together and create and innovate."

"Technology inspires you. Having that feeling of freedom and being able to do something gives you that sense of accomplishment and that sense of accomplishment drives you to do more things that you love, more things that excite you."

"It doesn’t matter if you went to a great university – what matters is if you have a computer, access to the internet and the drive to achieve."

"My aim is to democratize technology."

"I think now they understand the value of the quality of the education that’s provided, and the enabling environment for entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. It’s a struggle every day, but we have seen a lot of progress."

"The girls get the coding education but also other skills and the necessary knowledge to keep themselves away from problems – or at least be aware enough to report them."

"The primary motivation with all of these AI technologies is either to have more warfare or to have more profit."

"I want a different kind of root motivation for technology that puts human welfare first."

"I was being attacked by a bunch of guys, and nobody helped me at all."

"I’ve met so many people like you who think that they can just come here from other countries and take the hardest classes."

"AI tools that actually help people and not try to replace them."

"We need regulation and we need something better than just a profit motive."

"I think it made it really clear that unless there is external pressure to do something different, companies are not just going to self regulate."

"You don’t want someone like me who’s going to get in your way."

"Overrepresent hegemonic viewpoints and encode biases potentially damaging to marginalised populations."

"Impacts people all over the world and they don’t get to have a say on how they should shape it."

"That was the scariest thing."

"We should remember that we have the agency to do that."