Farah Qureshi

Farah Qureshi is an anthropologist studying how artificial intelligence and digital financial technologies are reshaping lives and livelihoods in East Africa. As Assistant Professor of Anthropology, she examines the complex interplay between financial inclusion initiatives, algorithmic decision-making, and social inequality in Kenya’s rapidly evolving digital economy.

Her ethnographic research reveals the hidden costs of Kenya’s celebrated “Silicon Savannah.” Through extensive fieldwork with young adults navigating mobile lending apps, digital credit scoring, and pay-as-you-go services, she documents how AI-driven financial technologies often reproduce rather than remedy historical patterns of exclusion. Her forthcoming book manuscript challenges celebratory narratives about financial inclusion, showing how automated decision-making systems can trap vulnerable users in cycles of digital debt while extracting data and value from Kenya’s emerging tech frontier.

Her recent work in the Journal of International and Comparative Law examines how AI tools in mobile payment platforms affect lending practices in Kenya and the United States. A forthcoming article in Oxford Intersections: AI in Society analyzes how algorithmic credit scoring restricts access to solar energy systems in rural Kenya. She is currently completing several works in progress, including articles on mobile gambling platforms in Kenya, the opacity of fintech credit scoring systems, and a book chapter on automated decision-making in Africa. This body of research reveals the lived experiences of young Kenyans confronting an increasingly automated financial landscape that promises inclusion while often delivering new forms of marginalization.

At Colby, Professor Qureshi brings these insights into the classroom through innovative courses examining technology, culture, and inequality. Her Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course provides students with foundational concepts through modules on race, identities, production, collecting, and technology. In “AI and Inequality,” students explore how algorithmic systems encode and amplify social biases. “Digital Infrastructure and Development” examines how technological networks influence movement of people, ideas, and identity in a global context. “Anthropology of Money” analyzes how digital financial technologies are transforming economic practices globally. Her ethnographic methods course trains students in qualitative research while examining questions of diversity and power in contemporary society.

Prior to joining Colby in 2022, Professor Qureshi was a visiting fellow at Mount Kenya University’s School of Economics and a researcher at UC Irvine’s Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, an M.Sc. in Material Anthropology from Oxford University, and a B.A. in History of Art from the University of Warwick.