People of ACM - Anicia Peters

July 14 , 2026

How did you initially become interested in issues related to social computing?

In earlier years, I observed stark differences between social media use between Namibian and American users with a strong cultural influence on how social media platforms were used. This research expanded to cover more countries and differences as well as use cases for education.

One of your most cited papers in the ACM Digital Library is “Finding Gender-Inclusiveness Software Issues with GenderMag: A Field Investigation,” which was presented at CHI 2016. What issue were you and your co-authors seeking to address with this initiative? How has the landscape changed in the past 10 years with respect to the interplay between gender and software?

As a postdoc, I worked alongside Margaret Burnett at Oregon State University where the team developed a genderized cognitive walkthrough method to find gender inclusiveness issues in software. We tested the method at different tech companies and started teaching it at universities in various countries including Namibia. Although technology has improved over the past 10 years, there are still fundamental differences in facets of how women and men interact with technology combined with other diversity factors such as age, race, and geography. Meanwhile the work has expanded beyond just gender to include such other diversity factors and specialized gendermag teaching materials.

One of your priorities has been finding ways to weave human-computer interaction (HCI) education into curricula across Africa. Why is HCI education especially important? What are the challenges and opportunities of improving HCI education in the context of Africa?

HCI education is important because it focuses on community-centeredness, co-design, as well as the need to take into account all facets of community value systems and norms. Technology designs should also take into consideration contextual differences across continents, people, and languages, serving as an augmentation to the human tasks. HCI offers so much potential for Africa-centric and African technologies, where Africans are increasingly endeavoring to create our own technologies whilst respecting and integrating cultural values and nuances. At one of the universities where I was a Dean, we managed to roll out a curriculum where every computing student across different fields had to spend time in the communities to develop an appreciation and understanding for the importance of co-design work. This is also what the AfriCHI conferences aim to achieve.

How will a strong partnership between the ACM Global Engagement Board and the Africa region benefit both partners?

We have assembled a few sub-committee members from all regions of Africa where we are thinking through ways in which we can develop Africa-wide activities for both professionals and students, while also developing African role-models and increasing the number of chapters across the continent. One of our initiatives is a mapping of ACM curricula use across Africa and establishing an African computing accreditation body. Likewise, ACM can increase its footprint and make potential members aware of the ACM’s programs and relevance to African students and professionals.

Will you tell us a little more about AfriCHI?

The Africa Human Computer Interaction (AfriCHI) is a conference series that engages a community of African computer scientists who are passionate about Human Computer Interaction, and lately, human-centered artificial intelligence. This highly successful conference series started in Kenya (2016), Namibia (2018), Mozambique (2021), South Africa (2023), Egypt (2025) and Nigeria (2027). The community also hosts design competitions, summer schools, mentoring activities and chapter events. Two students were mentored for AfriCHI at the ACM CHI2026 conference in Barcelona, Spain. AfriCHI has enthusiastic local talent as well as a diaspora community who keep the conference growing, vibrant and relevant to the African continent. International scholars are very welcome to experience the conference themselves.