The Center for Media, Democracy, Peace and Security-Rongo University advances research and knowledge dissemination in media, democracy, peace and security focusing on hosting visiting fellows, training workshops and seminars, writing policy briefs, curriculum development, coordinating innovative academic programs, supporting local governance programs, help counter violent and political extremism through crime and violence training, offer social media literacy programs and digital peacebuilding programs and empowers youth into innovation and self-sustainability in collaboration with local and international partners. The Center explores how media technologies can be used for peacebuilding through media representation (included tech driven innovation through big data, machine learning and AI) to transform humanity for self-preservation. The Center has innovated Maskani AI digital peacebuilding tool see https://zasb.unibas.ch/de/veranstaltungen/details/carl-schlettwein-lecture-2023/ and is currently collaborating with Konza Technopolis, Ministry of Information, Communication and The Digital Economy on AI for Peace under the government JITUME Digital Skills Program through the JITUME Digital Skills Lab supported by the Ministry.
The center strives to revisit approaches to epistemology foregrounding Pan-African/local approaches as opposed to how external modes of address through representation impacts on the image of Africa to address everyday peace and security challenges. This position is necessitated by the need for ontological approaches in Africa that embrace technology for good (Tech for Good) to the peace and security challenges often witnessed in the never ending conflicts in the continent from natural resource conflict, ethnic and racial conflicts, electoral conflict and violent extremism to ordinary urban crime and violence coupled with crises such as forced displacement, pandemics, climate and refugee crisis. The center champions positive peace (Godly peace) as opposed to negative peace which merely translates to absence of conflict. It focuses on post graduate research, policy and practice on peace and security informed through Africanism and African philosophies of Utu/Ubuntu/Ujamaa (humanity), Umoja (Unity) and Harambee (collective responsibility) for the benefit of humanity. The center also strives to harness the power of data science and AI in the service of humanity acting as a policy think-tank in Media and Security.