online access Nairobi Silicon Elsewhere. Nairobi, Global China, and the Promise of Techno-Capital Heralded as Africa’s “Silicon Savannah”—a cradle of innovation—Nairobi has become a technology and innovation capital for Kenya and for the continent at large. With a national strategy that has prioritized digital technology for the last two decades, many Chinese digital champions, smaller … Read moreSilicon Elsewhere
online access Nairobi Of Bloatware and Spreadsheets: Nairobi, Chinese Phones, and the Limits of Data Coloniality This article charts the recent history of affordable Chinese phones in Nairobi, a city heralded by many as one of Africa’s digital capitals. Here, cheap handsets manufactured in China are the material commodities that facilitate an increasingly competitive datafication … Read moreOf Bloatware and Spreadsheets: Nairobi, Chinese Phones, and the Limits of Data Coloniality
online access Nairobi Spectrums of infrastructural hybridity: insights from urban Africa for a propositional research agenda In the last decade, research on Southern cities has fruitfully contributed to infrastructure debates and theorisations. A critical thread challenges the ‘networked infrastructure ideal’ and celebrates the diverse ways people secure access to services in the absence of uniform … Read moreSpectrums of infrastructural hybridity: insights from urban Africa fora propositional research agenda
online access Nairobi Durabilities in the age of disruption This essay engages with the theme of infrastructural disruption from the perspective of a French deep-sea cable-repair ship (flying under a flag of convenience) docked in Cape Town’s harbor. This vessel sails both the Atlantic and Indian coasts of Africa to fix malfunctions and ruptures in … Read moreDurabilities in the age of disruption
online access Nairobi Coastal encounters with electrical hybridity: Karpowership in Africa’s energy transition Karpowership’s large floating vessels provide electricity to millions of people in Africa’s coastal urban centers. Both the technology choice and the business practices of the family-run company are controversial. Not only do the ships use highly polluting heavy fuels, but there are … Read moreCoastal encounters with electrical hybridity: Karpowership in Africa’s energy transition
online access Nairobi Fintech ‘frontiers’ and the platformed motorcycle: Emergent infrastructures of value creation in African cities Concerned with financialized extraction, the exploitation of precarious workers and racialized violence, critical scholars call for greater attention to the coloniality of financial technology (fintech) expansion in Africa. In this article, we echo the utility in foregrounding coloniality, … Read moreFintech ‘frontiers’ and the platformed motorcycle: Emergent infrastructures of value creation in African cities