Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at how new forms of digital learning through content freely available on the Internet, such as on Google, Youtube or TikTok, offer new opportunities for people from a low-income neighborhood in Nairobi, and how those pratices play out in a very local context of work and education.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that despite techno-utopian narratives of digital learning (through content freely available on the Internet), learning is a highly contextual practice, and through looking at a Community Based Organization (CBO) that offers tech trainings to young people from low-income neighborhoods in Nairobi, Kenya, I argue that digital learning does not replace formal education but rather is strategically incorporated into already existing practices of gathering, mixing and matching and ‘hustling’ opportunities to sustain oneself. The paper further argues that in such low-income neighborhoods learning and earning are inextricably entangled, and learning is thus always geared towards bettering one’s future in a very practical, locally embedded way. Lastly, the paper offers insights into how new global tech narratives and practices translate practically into very vernacular ways of trying to attain (formal) education and work opportunities through carefully strategizing what is available, online and offline.