Paper short abstract:

The paper draws on the case of drone uses in African healthcare systems in order to explore how digital innovation stimulates critical changes in infrastructural provision. Data extractivism and fantasies of infrastructural leap-frogging are major forces behind infrastructural experimentality.

Paper long abstract:

In 2016, the Silicon Valley-based tech company Zipline signed a deal with the Rwandan government for the delivery of logistical services in order to support the provision of healthcare in remote, infrastructurally disconnected areas of the country. Promoted as the world's first "fully automated instant delivery system," these services differ from conventional logistics offerings in that they are based on unmanned aerial vehicles, popularly known as drones, whose operation depends on complex software and digital computing.

In this paper, I draw on the case of experimental drone uses in African healthcare systems in order to explore how digital innovation stimulates critical changes in infrastructural provision and the ways in which the global role of places such as Silicon Valley, Rwanda, and Ghana, as well as their connections, are configured in such processes. Developing the idea of "infrastructure-as-service" as a sociological concept, we suggest that data extractivism and fantasies of infrastructural leap-frogging are major forces behind emergent fields of infrastructural experimentality. Revisiting dominant theories of infrastructure, the paper scrutinizes the promises of digital infrastructures and sheds light on the specific ways in which regions in the Global South participate in, and offer indispensable services for, infrastructural changes.