Paper short abstract:

How digital technologies are adapted and somehow reinvented in the African context? Different examples from Uganda will be analyzed to understand the economic, social and cultural impacts of new media on the rapidly changing context of the city of Kampala.

Paper long abstract:

In the last twenty years Africa adopted with enthusiasm the digital revolution. From a starting point where communication infrastructures of different types were very rare, today we observe an explosion of cell phones, computers, video, satellite TV channels, social network platforms, etc. These new media radically transformed social, economic, cultural and political life in the continent. The paper will investigate specific uses of technologies born in the West but re-invented and implemented in original forms in African contexts. I will present some examples from Uganda - mobile money circulation, innovative platforms for urban transport, low cost film production - showing how affordable digital technologies have been adapted to local needs in the Kampala area. These cases underline the creativity used to foster economic development but also to invent new forms of social life and cultural representations in an urban context rapidly changing.