Old poison in new bottles

How do we stop AI-generated ‘poverty porn’ fake images?

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence, Global health

There is an important and necessary conversation happening right now about the use of generative artificial intelligence in global health and humanitarian communications. Researchers like Arsenii Alenichev are correctly identifying a new wave of “poverty porn 2.0,” where artificial intelligence is used to generate stereotypical, racialized images of suffering – the very tropes many of us have worked for decades to banish. The alarms are valid. The images are harmful. But I am deeply concerned that in our rush to condemn the new technology, we are misdiagnosing the cause. The problem is not the tool. The problem is the user. Generative artificial intelligence is not the cause of poverty porn. The root cause is the deep-seeded racism and colonial mindset that have defined the humanitarian aid and global health sectors since their inception. This is not a new phenomenon. It is a long-standing pattern. In my private conversations with colleagues …

State of AI report

What the 2025 State of AI Report means for global health and humanitarian action

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence, Global health

The 2025 State of AI Report has arrived, painting a picture of an industry being fundamentally reshaped by “The Squeeze.” This is a critical, intensifying constraint on three key resources: the massive-scale compute (processing power) required for training, the availability of high-quality data, and the specialized human talent to build frontier models. This squeeze, the report details, is accelerating a consolidation of power. It favors the “hyperscalers”—the handful of large technology corporations that can afford to build their own power plants to run their data centers. For leaders in global health and humanitarian action, the report is essential reading. However, it must be read with a critical eye. The report’s narrative is, in many ways, the narrative of the hyperscalers. It focuses on the benchmarks they dominate, the closed models they are building, and the resource problems they face. This “view from the top” is valuable, but it is not …

Pour retrouver les enfants congolais non vaccinés, il est question des fumoirs à poisson et du dialogue inter-religieux

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Au deuxième jour de leurs travaux en direct, les professionnels de la santé congolais sont passés de la découverte à l’exploration des causes profondes qui laissent des centaines de milliers d’enfants exposés aux maladies évitables par la vaccination. Ils découvrent que les racines du problème sont souvent là où personne ne les attend: dans l’économie de la pêche, le dialogue avec les églises ou la gestion des camps de déplacés. Lire également: En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé Les analyses, plus fines, révèlent des leviers d’action insoupçonnés, démontrant la puissance d’une méthode qui transforme les soignants en stratèges. « La séance d’hier, c’était une séance de découverte, mais aujourd’hui, c’était une séance d’exploration. Explorer, c’est aller en profondeur. Il faut sonder ». Ces mots de Fidèle Tshibanda Mulangu, un participant congolais, résument la bascule …

En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé

En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé

Reda SadkiGlobal health

KINSHASA et LUMUMBASHI, le 7 octobre 2025 (La Fondation Apprendre Genève) – « Ces jeunes filles qui ont des grossesses indésirables, quand elles mettent au monde, elles ont tendance à laisser les enfants livrés à eux-mêmes », explique Marguerite Bosita, coordonnatrice d’une organisation non gouvernementale à Kinshasa. « Ce manque d’informations sur les questions liées à la vaccination se pose encore plus, car ces enfants grandissent exposés à des difficultés de santé ». Sa voix, émanant d’une mission de terrain dans la province du Kongo Central, s’est jointe à des centaines d’autres ce 7 octobre 2025. Il s’agissait de la deuxième journée d’un exercice d’apprentissage par les pairs de 16 jours visant à identifier et à atteindre les enfants dits « zéro dose » en République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Ce sont ces centaines de milliers de nourrissons qui n’ont reçu aucun vaccin pour les protéger de nombreuses maladies. Pour …

Colonization, climate change, and indigenous health from Algiers to Acre

Colonization, climate change, and indigenous health: from Algiers to Acre

Reda SadkiGlobal health

I sat in a conference hall in Rio Branco, Acre State, Brazil. My mind was in a sanatorium of Algiers, Algeria. This was where my mother was sent as a girl. They told her she got tuberculosis because she was an “indigène musulman”. In 1938, the year of my mother’s birth and after over a century of colonization, about 5 out of every 100 Algerian people got infected with tuberculosis each year. French colonial reports show that Algerians died from tuberculosis at much higher rates than French settlers. They claimed the disease was endemic due to the supposed inferiority of our people. And that she was going to die. Colonialism is a liar. She survived. And it took less than eight years for an independent Algeria, free of the scourge of colonialism, to eradicate the scourge of TB. Listening to the leaders at Brazil’s First National Seminar on Indigenous Health …

Gender in emergencies

Gender in emergencies: a new peer learning programme from The Geneva Learning Foundation

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

This is a critical moment for work on gender in emergencies. Across the humanitarian sector, we are witnessing a coordinated backlash. Decades of progress are threatened by targeted funding cuts, the erasure of essential research and tools, and a political climate that seeks to silence our work. Many dedicated practitioners feel isolated and that their work is being devalued. This is not a time for silence. It is a time for solidarity and for finding resilient ways to sustain our practice. In this spirit, The Geneva Learning Foundation is pleased to announce the new Certificate peer learning programme for gender in emergencies. We offer this programme to build upon the decades of vital work by countless practitioners and activists, seeing our role as one of contribution to the collective effort of all who continue to champion gender equality in emergencies. Learn more and request your invitation to the programme and its first …

Remembering Joseph Ngugi

From Murang’a to the world: remembering Joseph Ngugi, champion of peer learning for community health

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

“What keeps me going now is the excitement of the clients who receive the service and the sad faces of those clients who need the services and cannot get them.” Joseph Mbari Ngugi shared these words on May 30, 2023, capturing the profound empathy and dedication that defined his life’s work. This commitment to serving those most in need—and his deep awareness of those still unreached—characterized not only his career as a senior community health officer and public health specialist in Kenya’s Murang’a County, but also his extraordinary five-year journey through the Geneva Learning Foundation’s most rigorous learning programmes. It was the morning of the first day of August, 2025. The message from his daughter was simple and devastating: “Hello this is Wanjiru Mbari Ngugi’s Daughter. I am the one currently with his phone. This is to inform you that Dad passed away this morning.” Joseph’s passing represents more than …

WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action

Reda SadkiGlobal health

After the World Health Assembly’s adoption of ambitious global plan of action for climate and health, global and country stakeholders are meeting in Brasilia for the Global Conference on Climate and Health, ahead of COP30. Three critical observations emerged that illuminate why conventional global health approaches may be structurally inadequate for the challenges resulting from climate change impacts on health. These observations carry particular significance for global health leaders who now possess a WHA-approved strategy and action plan, but lack proven mechanisms for rapid, community-led implementation in the face of an unprecedented set of challenges. They also matter for major funders whose substantial investments in policy and research have yet to be matched by commensurate support for the communities and health workers who will be the ones to translate better science and policy into action. Signal 1: When funding disappears and demand explodes Seventy percent of global health funding vanished, …

NIGERIA insights report cover

Nigeria Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative: Piloting a national peer learning programme

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Insights report about Nigeria’s Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative surfaces surprising solutions for both demand- and supply-side immunization challenges When 4,434 practitioners from all 36 states asked why children in their communities remained unvaccinated, the problems they thought they understood often had entirely different root causes. “I ended up being surprised at the answer I got,” said one health worker. Half of the health workers who participated in Nigeria’s largest-ever peer learning exercise in July 2024 discovered that their initial assumptions about local immunization challenges were wrong. The six-week programme generated 409 detailed analyses of local immunization challenges, with each reviewed by peers across the country. One year after The Geneva Learning Foundation launched the first Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative, in partnership with UNICEF and Gavi, under the auspices of the Nigeria Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), a comprehensive insights report documents findings that illuminate persistent gaps between health system …

Why peer learning is critical to survive the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Why peer learning is critical to survive the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence, Global health

María, a pediatrician in Argentina, works with an AI diagnostic system that can identify rare diseases, suggest treatment protocols, and draft reports in perfect medical Spanish. But something crucial is missing. The AI provides brilliant medical insights, yet María struggles to translate them into action in her community. What is needed to realize the promise of the Age of Artificial Intelligence? Then she discovers the missing piece. Through a peer learning network—where health workers develop projects addressing real challenges, review each other’s work, and engage in facilitated dialogue—she connects with other health professionals across Latin America who are learning to work with AI as a collaborative partner. Together, they discover that AI becomes far more useful when combined with their understanding of local contexts, cultural practices, and community dynamics. This speculative scenario, based on current AI developments and existing peer learning successes, illuminates a crucial insight as we ascend into …