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Short abstract:

The paper explores the pathway and practices of China's digital innovation in Africa. It illustrates the sociotechnical, cultural, and algorithmic infrastructures in converting local users’ internet consumption into profitable economic values and examines innovation from the South-South perspective.

Long abstract:

The common sense understanding of digital innovation often focuses on faster chips, high-end cell phones and big techs FAAMG business strategies. China, as a latecomer in internet technology, has always been seen as a chaser or imitator. However, could such perceptions reflect developed countries’ biases towards innovation and invisible infrastructural hegemony? Could there be alternatives that challenge the dominated Western model? This paper explores the pathways and practices of China's internet technology innovation, using Transsion and Transsnet, China's largest mobile phone and social platform companies in Africa as case studies. It examines the historical, social, political and cultural factors that shape Chinese companies’ business strategies of perceiving and defining “the African market”, along with their hardware, software product design and marketing practices to sustain local users.

We argue that China’s internet innovation in Africa illustrates the advantages and opportunities yet shortcomings of “innovation with Chinese characters”. The biggest obstacle comes not from achieving technical superiority, but from the soft power deficit in understanding, characterizing and commercializing African cultures, when competing with Western products such as Facebook or Instagram whose advantages lie in their existing global popularity, celebrity branding, as well as the language use and cultural affinity rooted in the colonial history. Our empirical study indicates the critical role of the hidden cultural, diplomatic and ideological infrastructures in converting users’ digital consumption, content creation and data flows into profitable economic values. It also illustrates a different digital innovation approach from the South-South perspective.