Myself and Mark Graham recently wrote a short essay for the IDRC-IT for Change Network Inclusion Roundtable that took place in Bangalore, India.
Snippet below. The full essay is available on the roundtable website
while much research has been conducted into the impacts of ICTs on older economic processes and practices, there remains surprisingly little research into the emergence of the new informationalised economy in Africa.
As such, it is precisely now that we urgently need research to understand what impacts are observable, who benefits, who doesn’t, and how these changes match up to our expectations for change.
We need to ask if we are seeing a new era of development on the continent fuelled by ICTs, or whether Sub- Saharan Africa’s engagement with the global knowledge economy continues to be on terms that reinforce dependence, inequality, underdevelopment, and economic extraversion.