Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Peter Chonka
(King's College London)
Rosemary Okello-Orlale (Strathmore University Business School)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Gianluca Iazzolino
(Global Development Institute, University of Manchester)
Stephanie Diepeveen (University of Cambridge)
- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Economy and Development (x) Futures (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S87
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This multi and inter-disciplinary panel interrogates the increasingly powerful discourse of 'digital transformation' in African contexts and explores the implications, potentials and risks of datafication in relation to the aid sector, the future of work, and state-society relations.
Long Abstract:
This panel is a product of a research network formed in 2020 to explore ongoing digital transformations of social, economic and political relations in East Africa (datarightsafrica.org). From mobile money and blockchain in aid, data-driven responses to climate change, expanding fintech markets, and the ever-growing digital gig economy in the region, this network of researchers, advocacy groups and tech sector practitioners has examined questions of digital rights and power in contemporary African societies. These realms are increasingly converging through the use of shared digital platforms, and interactions between states, non-governmental actors, and tech/telecom companies. International donors and corporate actors place particular emphasis on the notion of ‘digital transformation’, which is emerging as an hegemonic discourse to steer the trajectory of innovation. This (fuzzy) discourse celebrates a technocratic approach in the name of sustainable development, environmental resilience and socio-economic inclusion, while often obscuring politics. This panel seeks to instigate a multi- and inter-disciplinary reflection on the implications of digital transformation for rights in Africa. A key dynamic here relates to the tension between (positive) narratives of digital ‘inclusion’, and the increasing capacities for state, corporate, and humanitarian surveillance that engagement with such technologies enable. We welcome papers that interrogate digital transformation (and datafication) in Africa from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. How should ‘digital transformation’ be conceptualised? What do different approaches highlight and obscure? What does digital transformation look like, and how can the realities of power and inclusion around digital processes/applications help to inform the imagining of African (digital) futures?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 June, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Senegal put significant resources into the digital transformation. The goal is to show how it is transforming the socio-economic dynamics of an unequal territory and concentrating an important strategic competition between the telecommunications actors, in the name of a certain idea of development.
Paper long abstract:
The « Digital Senegal 2025 » strategy, must serve as a catalyst for modernizing the economy and improving the competitiveness Senegal Emerging Plan.
Digital technology is seen as a way to make up for the lack of traditional infrastructures thanks to online services and the speed of adoption of these solutions. This sector is a way to create new jobs and goods that demonstrate the Africans’ capacity for innovation.
However, access to networks and online services are conditioned by electric access, the economic interests of the operators, as well as the financial and technical capacities of the populations to use Internet.
While there are important demographic and socio-economic inequalities in a territory with important constraints, what are the new territorial dynamics induced by the digital transformation ?
The aim here is to show how competition in the telecommunications sector conditions the discourse, the representations and the spatialization of power between public and private players, between historical economic partners (France) and more recent ones (China).
This competition pushes each player to deploy multiple strategies to assert its influence and power. For private players, the strategic interest is justified by demographic growth, the use of digital solutions and the weak regulations on data. For public players, digital development of the territory is the return of the planning state, while offloading its responsibilities to private players. It is also a way to enhance political action and promote an idea of « development » of the country through digital technology, to attract more investments.
Paper short abstract:
Cette recherche abordé la problématique de l'introduction du numérique dans le secteur de l'Education (volet orientation universitaire). Elle met aux prises des intérêts antagoniques des acteurs qui du reste sont mus de part et d'autre par une "rationalité" au sens bondonienne du terme.
Paper long abstract:
L’enseignement supérieur burkinabè qui compte quinze (15) institutions d’enseignement publiques réparties dans
les treize (13) chefs-lieux de région du pays, permettait au nouveau bachelier d’étudier dans une université de son
choix. Cependant, avec l’avènement de la plateforme Campus Faso, celui-ci a l’obligation de faire un dépôt de
dossier dans au moins deux universités différentes en choisissant au total douze filières. Cela pose un double
problème. En plus du choix de filière se joint le choix d’université. C’est dans l’optique d’analyser la
problématique du choix d’université que la présente recherche intitulée : « Gouvernance universitaire et
rationalité du choix d’université des bacheliers orientés par Campus Faso à l’Université Nazi BONI » a été menée.
A travers une méthode qualitative et une posture théorique basée sur la théorie du choix rationnel (TCR), nous
avons réalisé trente entretiens individuels et un focus group auprès de deux catégories d’acteurs (responsables de
Campus Faso et étudiants de l’UNB). Il ressort que de part et d’autre la problématique de la rationalité est mise
au-devant. Pour les bacheliers, il s’agit des raisons personnelles, sociales, économiques, mais toutes rationnelles
au sens de R. Boudon (1979) qui justifient leur choix de villes (Universités). Du côté des autorités universitaires,
la rationalité s’entend comme la gestion rationnelle de la capacité d’accueil de chaque université.
Mots-clés : Orientation, Gouvernance universitaire, Campus Faso, Choix d’université, Nouveau bachelier.
Paper short abstract:
This talk offers empirical insights into experimental practices of an East African tech-firm for digitalisation in agriculture. Developing a technology while promoting entrepreneurship by setting up an e-extension system in a Tanzanian village raises questions about trust, data and profits.
Paper long abstract:
Given the widespread lack of alternatives in post-colonial and post-development debates, digitalisation raises hopes for a future path to development. In contrast to a history of unfulfilled promises by the state or NGO projects, the testing of digital technologies by the private sector is seen as relentlessly honest and hard business, leading to sustainable development. Instead of mere transfer, knowledge and technologies are now to be developed directly at the sites of their application and in collaboration with local communities. In this presentation, I will illustrate how the development of a profitable technology and the promotion of smallholder entrepreneurship will be linked through the establishment of an e-extension system in the Tanzanian village of Mandera. Through my ethnographic insights into the work of the East African technology company M-Shamba, as well as the use of the I-Plus information platform for knowledge sharing among Tanzanian farmers, it becomes clear that digitalisation in agricultural development does not necessarily escape its technological and epistemic fixation. Cooperation between private and non-governmental actors, the production and use of data, and individualised and regional knowledge exchange are developing in contradictory ways. Questions arise about honest intentions, trust and sustainable business models around digital technologies. This contribution suggests that the experimental use of digital technologies can only reinvent agricultural development to a limited extent.