British Taxpayers Fund Kenyan Sex Chatbot
A “pleasure-oriented” sex chatbot for Kenyan teenagers was developed using aid money from British taxpayers. The Telegraph has the story.
The app was built as part of a £41 million UK aid programme which aims to invest in “radical technology solutions” to issues in the developing world.
The Nena chatbot was described as “a pleasure-oriented digital companion for young people exploring sexual health” and aimed at those between the ages of 18 and 24, but an academic study suggested it had done little to improve sexual health.
Other projects that have received taxpayer funding include “pay-as-you-chill” cold storage in Zambia and “smart contraceptive vending machines” in Nairobi.
MPs asked why taxpayers’ money was being “wasted” on such schemes and called for a review of foreign aid spending.
It is the latest in a series of disclosures by the Telegraph about aid spending including a £52 million ‘road to nowhere’ through the Amazon rainforest and a push to stop ocean plastic pollution in landlocked African countries.
Dame Priti Patel, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: “Britain is a country, not a charity. In this ever-changing world UK Aid must serve our national interest.
“Aid allocations have not been strategic enough and far too much money has been funnelled into inappropriate projects without scrutiny or conditionality.”
The sex chatbot was funded in 2019 as part of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Ideas to Impact aid programme which it says is aimed at “testing new technologies and innovative approaches to address development challenges”.
The chatbot was designed to encourage safe sex in Kenya, which has the third-largest HIV epidemic in the world and where more than half of new infections are among the young.
The developers discovered that there was “an interest among Kenyan youth to access information on sexual pleasure topics, including a strong interest in information on how to give and receive sexual pleasure”.
The topics of sex and pleasure made up about 70% of the total number of app views, a review found.
However, of the 1,119 referrals sent to a local sexual health clinic through the app, not a single one led to further action. A study found that there was no evidence of increased use of contraception as a result of the chatbot.
Despite the lack of concrete results, officials said the pilot was “promising” and they would look at “further fundings”.
The FCDO refused to respond to questions about how much taxpayers’ money was spent on the chatbot and said it was “not appropriate for officials to comment on funding decisions made under previous administrations”.
Worth reading in full.
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Wouldnt it be nice to go back to a world free of NGOs and people trying to “make a difference” and “improve the world”?
You don’t seriously believe that the people who used “Kenyan teenagers are interested in sex” (Really? Who da thunk …) as excuse to scam UK taxpayers out the money wasted for developing this app really believed they were “making a difference” and would be “improving the world”, do you?
This is only what we expect from our decadent, degenerate, deranged dominant class. And only nationalist revolution will return us to the situation where British tax-payers money is spent on supporting the British people.
I strongly doubt you’d get many takers for such a lame looking thing
The people behind this were looking (and found) underwriters and not takers.
Absolutely
As I started to read this report I thought we would soon have to recognise that scandals such as this had been commited by Labour. Eventually the serious faults of theb 14 years woulod exopire and scandals would all be Labour-made.
Then I saw that his was started in 2019 under the Tories.
When does Kenya anticipate that it will be fully developed? Just asking.
Two weeks after foreign aid payments have been stopped at the earliest. Could take six months, though.
:->
As well as when, how will they measure what ‘developed’ status is?
Does it pretend to be your cousin?