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African Economies: Simply Connect? Problematizing the Discourse on Connectivity in Logistics and Communication

  • February 2019
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/10890.003.0025
  • In book: Digital Economies at Global Margins (pp.341-364)
  • Chapter: 14
  • Publisher: MIT Press
Authors:
Stefan Ouma
Stefan Ouma
Stefan Ouma
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Julian Stenmanns
Julian Stenmanns
Julian Stenmanns
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Julia Verne
Julia Verne
Julia Verne
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
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Abstract and Figures

Investigations of what increasing digital connectivity and the digitalization of the economy mean for people and places at the world's economic margins. Within the last decade, more than one billion people became new Internet users. Once, digital connectivity was confined to economically prosperous parts of the world; now Internet users make up a majority of the world's population. In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines and locations investigate the impact of increased digital connectivity on people and places at the world's economic margins. Does the advent of a digitalized economy mean that those in economic peripheries can transcend spatial, organizational, social, and political constraints—or do digital tools and techniques tend to reinforce existing inequalities? The contributors present a diverse set of case studies, reporting on digitalization in countries ranging from Chile to Kenya to the Philippines, and develop a broad range of theoretical positions. They consider, among other things, data-driven disintermediation, women's economic empowerment and gendered power relations, digital humanitarianism and philanthropic capitalism, the spread of innovation hubs, and two cases of the reversal of core and periphery in digital innovation. ContributorsNiels Beerepoot, Ryan Burns, Jenna Burrell, Julie Yujie Chen, Peter Dannenberg, Uwe Deichmann, Jonathan Donner, Christopher Foster, Mark Graham, Nicolas Friederici, Hernan Galperin, Catrihel Greppi, Anita Gurumurthy, Isis Hjorth, Lilly Irani, Molly Jackman, Calestous Juma, Dorothea Kleine, Madlen Krone, Vili Lehdonvirta, Chris Locke, Silvia Masiero, Hannah McCarrick,Deepak K. Mishra, Bitange Ndemo, Jorien Oprins, Elisa Oreglia, Stefan Ouma, Robert Pepper, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Julian Stenmanns, Tim Unwin, Julia Verne, Timothy Waema
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... India's economic growth on the basis of export-oriented services has inspired policy-makers elsewhere to emulate its trajectory. These aspirations fit into a broader narrative about information and communication technologies (ICTs) which positions ICTs as opening and enabling new forms of economic inclusion and market access (Graham and Mann 2013;Ouma et al. 2019). This narrative echoes earlier colonial modernization theories that linked economic development to big infrastructure projects; narratives which are now experiencing a revival with the growing importance of digital infrastructures in facilitating economic activities (Ibid; Graham et al. 2015). ...
... Thirdly, especially pronounced in the case of Kenya, is the belief that the main barrier to ITES is internet connectivity (Graham et al. 2015). However, what this focus on connectivity as market access neglects is the hierarchical nature of production networks, not just within ITES but within the global economy more generally (Ouma et al. 2019). ...
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... More critical perspectives draw from other connectivity debates in alluding to the pitfalls of Internet connectivity (cf. the reference to African port infrastructure by Ouma et al. (2019) or the comparison of railway and fibre optic cable construction in East Africa by Graham et al. (2015)). A major conjuncture in this debate lies in the understanding that technology and connectivity is not neutral per se (Ouma et al., 2019). ...
... More critical perspectives draw from other connectivity debates in alluding to the pitfalls of Internet connectivity (cf. the reference to African port infrastructure by Ouma et al. (2019) or the comparison of railway and fibre optic cable construction in East Africa by Graham et al. (2015)). A major conjuncture in this debate lies in the understanding that technology and connectivity is not neutral per se (Ouma et al., 2019). This becomes particularly relevant with the pivotal question about 'who controls the digital' . ...
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... Some scholars also point to other FinTech-induced challenges such as individual indebtedness through borrowing and gambling Bateman et al., 2019;Bernards, 2019), fraudulent FinTech transactions (Karpoff, 2020;Makina, 2019), and dispossessing people of their capacity to form and sustain social ties (relational value) necessary for everyday social and economic stability (Guermond, 2020). For some, these counter empowerment narratives pose critical empirical and theoretical questions around the uneven geographies of FinTech often enacted with and through new forms of neoliberal financialization and digitalization processes, especially in the global South (Gabor & Brooks, 2017;Lai & Samers, 2020;Ouma et al., 2019). ...
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Value creation and free labour in digital development agendas: evidence from Colombia
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Half-Title Page Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction
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