Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ways that the global maker movement is both embraced and rejected by a transnational network of technologists, scientists and artisans in Africa; and critically unpacks the material practices and discursive labor put towards delivering its envisioned future for Africa.

Paper long abstract:

STS research has been both enthusiastic and critical of the discourses accompanying the global maker movement, particularly its visions of a techno utopia and individual productivity. This work has drawn on evidence from a range of geographic, socio-economic and political contexts, and collectively speaks to extant literature on alternate forms of technology entrepreneurship and innovation. In this paper, I present what might be characterized as African participation in the global maker movement and how it translates into the critical labor of future-making.

Specifically, I focus on the material practices and discursive work of a transnational group of technologists, scientists, DIYers, artists and artisans in Africa who together articulate an envisioned future for Africa that both embraces and rejects some of the tenets of the global maker movement. I show that while this future resonates with the modern project and is powered, like in the global maker movement, by information technologies and entrepreneurship, it relies more on an Africa centered and historically located ethos of not just making but also 'doing'. Drawing on ethnographic engagements with tech innovation hubs in Ghana and Ethiopia, Maker Faire Africa, and interviews from Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States, I critically unpack what constitutes this form of making and 'doing'. I argue that ultimately the strategic distancing from what is characterized as the hobbyist and individualistic bent of the (largely western) global maker movement works to (re) make a 'new African' subjectivity - one that is committed to the collective social and economic good of Africa.