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- Convenors:
-
Mayke Kaag
(African Studies Centre Leiden)
Alena Thiel (IT University Copenhagen)
Bidisha Chaudhuri (IIIT, Bangalore)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Anthropology (x) Infrastructure (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S84
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel invites critical examination of transnational commercial actors, technology experts and other forms of digital labour that condition the circulation of digital public infrastructure projects between Africa and the world, unleashing new forms of (digital) statehood.
Long Abstract:
Contemporary digital public infrastructure projects are significantly shaping the future of statehood in Africa. Following large-scale investment in biometric ID projects across many African countries, we currently observe a new orthodoxy of platformization, customizability, open APIs and application development - often intimately tied into new forms of digital entrepreneurship. This panel explores the South-South circulation of material devices, associated forms of labour, organisation, capital, and patterns of thought (e.g. techno-optimist imaginaries) that is shaping or will shape the trajectory of digital statehood in many African countries. For example, the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) developed in Bangalore with the promise to roll out digital identity solutions in contexts of low IT capacity, has gained currency within the continent. Further contributions may focus on open source or commercial digital health and welfare platforms, applications for monitoring public sector performance, among others. Situating these circulations within South-South relations, we bring focus on new actors and their influence on imaginaries of African Futures in ways that are qualitatively different from earlier narratives and projects of development originating from the global north. How then do circulating model systems such as India's Aadhaar along with the future imaginaries of progress and care inscribed in them shape the expansion of digital infrastructural platforms in African statehood?
We invite papers on digital infrastructure in Africa that focus on
• Transnational actors and networks in digital public infrastructure
• Digital entrepreneurship in public goods and services
• New labour processes in digital public infrastructure
• Platformization of the state
• Digital Public Finance
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 June, 2023, -Evans Awuni (Universität Erfurt)
Paper short abstract:
This study explores digitalization inequalities & their impact on employment in Ghana, a fast-growing digital tech hub. Using data from 1251 respondents, it examines the intensity of digitalization, skills, motivation & utilization and how digital inequalities affect different employment outcomes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents an empirical study on digitalization inequalities in Ghana, a fast-growing digital tech hub in Africa where the government has implemented various digital processing and payment systems, mobile money interoperability, and a digital addressing system. The study aimed to provide insights into the widespread digitalization inequalities beyond connectivity, including skills and motivation, and the degree of utilization. Using original data from 1251 respondents in Ghana, the study constructed an intensity index based on 34 items to capture the multidimensionality of digitalization. The study also examined the correlates of digital inequalities across different employment and socio-economic groupings and provided implications for further research and the outlook of the future of work in a developing country context. Despite Ghana's progress in digitalization, the study raises questions about the impact of these trends on development outcomes and the potential for digital development disparities to create new divides or reinforce existing ones in the labor market.
Tommy Tse (University of Amsterdam) Nanne Van Noord (University of Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
Has China become a neo-coloniser of Africa? Existing scholarship largely focuses on China’s infrastructural expansion. By critically analysing the China-Africa networks of fashion e-commerce and consumption, we dissect the neglected dialectical platform trade practices and Kenyan consumer agency.
Paper long abstract:
Africa’ e-commerce industry is often considered to have the greatest potential for further development, with its revenue reaching US$16.5 billion in 2017 and US$29 billion expected by 2022 (Li and Bode, 2021: 48). China appears to be the most ambitious player, with African infrastructure investments from 2011 to 2016 averaging US$12 billion per year. Has China become a neo-coloniser exporting its cultural and economic power to the world? Or has China actually become a white knight who enables “South-South cooperation,” leading to co-dependent economic growth and cultural exchange? Existing scholarship largely focuses on how China’s technological and infrastructural expansion can achieve its ambitions abroad. Yet, how China’s power is manifested, negotiated or resisted in people’s daily life in a South-South setting remains underresearched and undertheorised.
Couldry and Mejias (2019) coined the term “data colonialism” to describe how the global tech giants (e.g. Amazon, Alibaba, Google) capture everyday social acts through algorithmic means and convert them into quantifiable data for the generation of profit. However, Mumford (2022) argues data colonialism theory’s primary concern has not gone far enough to prompt a “decolonial shift in thinking”; it inadequately engages with, or at times utterly neglects, the relevant Southern scholarship (Moosavi, 2020).
By critically analysing the China-Africa networks of fashion trade and consumption on e-commerce platforms operating in the Kenyan market, we reevaluate the empirical validity of data colonialism, dissect the often neglected dialectical platform trade practices and African consumer agency, and uncover the complex dynamics and expressions of power involved.
Alena Thiel (IT University Copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper takes as its case Ghana's app-based digital addressing system to investigate novel instances of platformization in digital public infrastructure in Africa. It proposes a South-South comparative view on the development of digital state infrastructure as future making.
Paper long abstract:
This paper takes as its case Ghana's GPS- and app-based digital addressing system, GhanaPostGPS, to investigate novel instances of platformization in digital public infrastructure in Africa. Foregrounding the developmental promises and future imaginaries associated with open data/open APIs, officials at the GhanaPost - the public agency responsible for the development and initial rollout of the system - not only associated the project with the vision of a knowledge-based economy as defined in the government's larger datafication agenda. At the same time, the system designers embraced the idea of building a new interface between private sector and state-led population registration similar to the hourglass metaphor described by Singh (2019) for the case of India's Aadhaar system. The paper traces processes of the techno-political integration of the novel addressing system with other state registers (e.g. ambulance services) and initiatives of private sector developers building applications in areas as diverse as financial sector authentication services, and medical advice services. The paper proposes a South-South comparative view on the development of digital state infrastructure in order to illuminate the processes of adaptation of model systems, their implementation in public sector digitalization, and ultimately, their capture by private sector activities, and their impact on the future of African statehood.