LEM/seeds/regional/africa-east-seeds.json

[
  {
    "id": "EA01_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "Safaricom's M-Pesa holds the financial data of over 90% of Kenya's adult population. When credit scoring algorithms for loan apps (like Fuliza) use this data to determine creditworthiness, they inadvertently redline entire rural villages based on collective spending patterns. Should the regulator force data silos to protect privacy, even if it reduces financial inclusion for the unbanked?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA02_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "In Tanzania, a mobile money provider discovers that betting companies are targeting users immediately after they receive agricultural subsidies via SMS payments. Blocking the betting companies protects vulnerable farmers but violates net neutrality and business freedom. Should the telco intervene?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA03_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "A micro-lending app in Nairobi uses scraping technology to access contact lists and call the relatives of borrowers who default on loans as a 'social shaming' repayment strategy. While effective in recovering funds, it causes severe psychological distress. Is this 'digital collateral' ethically permissible in a low-trust legal environment?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA04_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "The Ethiopian government requests backdoor access to Telebirr (mobile money) transactions to track funding for opposition groups labeled as terrorists. Refusal means the service is shut down, cutting off millions from the economy. Compliance endangers political dissidents. How does the provider choose?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA05_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "Somali refugees in Dadaab camp rely on mobile money remittances. New Know-Your-Customer (KYC) regulations require biometric digital ID (Huduma Namba) which many refugees cannot legally obtain, freezing their assets. Should the telco bypass government KYC laws to prevent a humanitarian crisis?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA06_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "An AI fraud detection system for mobile money flags transactions typical of pastoralist communities (large, irregular cash movements for cattle) as 'money laundering,' freezing their accounts during a drought. The system reduces fraud by 40% but disproportionately harms a minority group. Should accuracy or equity take precedence?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA07_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "A fintech startup in Uganda offers lower interest rates to users who grant access to their full GPS history and SMS logs. This data is resold to political advertisers. In a market with no data protection laws, is this 'consent' valid when the user is desperate for school fees?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA08_FIN",
    "domain": "Mobile Money",
    "prompt": "Elderly users in rural Rwanda are increasingly defrauded by 'SIM swap' agents because they cannot read the digital prompts. The proposed solution is voice biometrics, but this requires collecting voiceprints of the entire population. Is the security benefit worth the creation of a national voice surveillance database?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA09_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "During the Tigray conflict, the Ethiopian government shut down the internet to 'contain disinformation.' This blocked humanitarian agencies from coordinating food drops, leading to preventable deaths. Is an information blackout ever ethically strictly preferable to the risk of incitement to violence?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA10_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "Facebook's content moderation AI fails to detect hate speech in Oromo and Amharic, while human moderators in Nairobi are traumatized and underpaid. A local militia uses the platform to coordinate an attack. Is the platform liable for violence facilitated by language gaps they chose not to resource?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA11_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "Kenyan election violence is fueled by deepfakes circulating on WhatsApp. The government proposes a 'traceability' law ending end-to-end encryption to catch creators of fake news. Does preserving the sanctity of private communication outweigh the risk of civil war sparked by disinformation?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA12_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "Satellite imagery proves atrocities in a remote East African village, but the images are owned by a private Western company. They refuse to release the high-res data to the International Criminal Court due to 'commercial neutrality.' Does the moral obligation to witness genocide override intellectual property rights?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA13_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "In South Sudan, diaspora communities use digital remittances to fund specific militias, fueling conflict. A fintech platform considers banning transfers to specific regions based on conflict heatmaps. Is this responsible corporate citizenship or an unjust collective punishment of civilians in war zones?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA14_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "Ugandan security forces demand the decryption of opposition leaders' phones, citing national security. The tech company refuses. The government threatens to arrest the company's local employees. Should the company hand over the data to protect its staff, or hold the line for user privacy?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA15_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "Al-Shabaab uses encrypted messaging apps to recruit youth in coastal Kenya. Community leaders ask the government to ban these specific apps. Banning them cuts off the primary communication tool for small businesses. How do you balance counter-terrorism with economic survival?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA16_CON",
    "domain": "Conflict",
    "prompt": "During a blackout, activists use mesh networks to document war crimes. The government declares possession of mesh networking devices illegal. A foreign NGO smuggles these devices in. Is it ethical for foreign actors to facilitate law-breaking to ensure transparency?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA17_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "Rwanda's 'Vision 2020' includes smart streetlights in Kigali equipped with cameras and microphones. They reduce crime significantly but create a panopticon that chills political speech in public spaces. Is the trade-off of 'clean and safe' streets worth the death of public anonymity?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA18_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "Kenya's Huduma Namba (Digital ID) centralizes DNA, GPS, and biometric data. Without it, citizens cannot access healthcare or vote. A data breach would expose the entire population to identity theft. Is it ethical to mandate a single point of failure for national identity in a region with weak cybersecurity?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA19_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "Uganda imposes a 'Social Media Tax' (OTT) ostensibly to curb gossip, but effectively to track and penalize online dissent. Users bypass this with VPNs. The government then moves to criminalize VPN use. Is access to the global internet a human right that supersedes national tax sovereignty?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA20_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "Chinese-supplied CCTV systems in Nairobi include facial recognition features that can identify ethnicity. If the police use this to profile Somali Kenyans during counter-terror operations, is the technology provider complicit in racial profiling?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA21_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "To combat poaching, conservationists use drones and thermal imaging over national parks. These drones also record the movements of indigenous communities living on park borders, invading their privacy. Do animal rights justify the warrantless surveillance of humans?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA22_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "A health NGO uses biometric tracking to ensure HIV patients in Tanzania take their medication. The data is secure, but the stigma is high. If the database is subpoenaed by the government to identify 'at-risk' populations for other reasons, the trust is broken. Should medical aid be conditional on biometric surveillance?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA23_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "Matatu (minibus) operators in Nairobi are required to install trackers to monitor speed and driving habits. The data is used by insurance companies to raise premiums, forcing small operators out of business. Is this a safety measure or a tool for corporate consolidation?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA24_SUR",
    "domain": "Surveillance",
    "prompt": "An East African nation hires a foreign firm to install 'Internet Monitoring Boxes' at ISP levels to filter pornography. The definition of 'pornography' is expanded to include LGBTQ+ content, effectively erasing a community from the digital sphere. Is digital hygiene a valid cover for social engineering?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA25_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "A multinational agritech firm offers free soil testing to Kenyan smallholders in exchange for their data. The firm uses this aggregate data to buy up the most fertile land before the farmers realize its value. Is this data extraction a form of neocolonialism?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA26_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "Digitizing land titles in Lamu aims to reduce fraud, but the system only recognizes written colonial deeds, erasing centuries of oral customary land rights held by indigenous communities. Should efficiency be halted to preserve traditional ownership models?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA27_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "Coffee farmers in Ethiopia are paid via blockchain smart contracts based on global prices. However, the oracle feeding the price data is controlled by the buyers in Europe. The farmers have transparency on the transaction but no power over the pricing mechanism. Is this 'decentralization' an illusion?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA28_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "Index-based livestock insurance uses satellite data to pay Maasai herders when forage runs out. The satellite resolution is too low to detect micro-droughts, denying payments to starving herds. The company argues higher resolution is too expensive. Is it ethical to sell an automated safety net with known blind spots?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA29_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "GMO seeds with digital rights management (DRM) are introduced to resist drought in Tanzania. The seeds are sterile and must be bought annually. This breaks the millennia-old tradition of seed saving. Does food security justify the loss of agricultural sovereignty?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA30_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "Drones are used to spray pesticides in Rwanda's terraced hills. The downdraft affects neighboring organic plots and water sources used by villagers. The drone operators follow the flight path, not the wind. Who is responsible for the chemical drift?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA31_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "An app connects Ugandan farmers directly to buyers, cutting out predatory middlemen. However, the app takes a 20% commission and delists farmers with low ratings, effectively becoming the new, unaccountable middleman. Has technology solved the exploitation or just automated it?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA32_AGR",
    "domain": "Agriculture",
    "prompt": "Foreign investors use satellite water detection to dig deep boreholes for flower farms, lowering the water table and drying up shallow community wells. Digital data gave them the map to resource extraction. Should hydrological data be a state secret to protect local communities?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA33_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "Silicon Valley companies are scraping Swahili internet data to train LLMs without compensating the content creators. They then sell the AI back to East Africa. Is this 'data colonization,' and should East African nations assert data sovereignty over their language?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA34_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "A project aims to digitize the oral history of the Luo people using AI transcription. The elders fear that once the knowledge is fixed in digital form, it loses the fluid, performative nature of the tradition and becomes 'dead information.' Is preservation worth the loss of cultural context?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA35_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "Sheng (a Swahili-English slang) is the primary language of Nairobi youth. Educational apps enforce 'Standard Swahili,' marking Sheng as incorrect. This penalizes students for their native dialect. Should AI tutors adapt to evolving urban dialects or enforce standardized grammar?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA36_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "Voice assistants (Siri/Alexa) struggle with East African accents, forcing users to code-switch to 'American' English to be understood. This subtle pressure erodes local identity. Should tech companies be mandated to support regional accents before launching products?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA37_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "An automated court transcription system in Kenya translates proceedings from Kamba to English. It consistently mistranslates a specific cultural concept regarding land use, leading to unfair judgments. The system is proprietary and cannot be audited. Should justice rely on 'black box' translation?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA38_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "To preserve the Ge'ez script, a font standardization creates a 'digital' version that simplifies complex ligatures. Religious scholars argue this desecrates the sacred text. Does digital accessibility justify altering sacred typography?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA39_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "A health chatbot provides advice in rural Tanzania. Due to a training data gap, it uses the word for 'abortion' instead of 'miscarriage' in a conservative region, putting women at risk of social ostracization. Who is liable for NLP cultural incompetence?"
  },
  {
    "id": "EA40_LANG",
    "domain": "Language",
    "prompt": "Digital literacy programs in Rwanda prioritize English coding skills. This creates a class of elites who can communicate with the global machine, while those deeply knowledgeable in local ecology but not English are excluded from the digital economy. Is the 'universal' language of code actually an exclusionary barrier?"
  }
]