Africa-China Dig Entanglements

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Title: Africa-China Digital Entanglements: Development, Geopolitics, and Techno-Power Africa-China’s Digital Entanglements examines some of the methodological and conceptual instruments that have shaped the understanding and history of technology in Africa. In doing so, it addresses the context, political commitments, and conceptual roots of technological adoption and investment in the afterlife of colonialism. Reading, analyzing, and critically interrogating works by scholars in African-China studies, science, technology and society, international relations, and related fields is the focus of this graduate course. This course seeks to address topics such as technology's relations with the state, technology and development, technology and diplomacy, and the politics of techno-modernity. Principally, we explore how African postcolonial states use technologies to try to engender futures beyond the asymmetries established by colonialism and its aftermath. To this end, we draw attention to China’s growing digital footprint in Africa as part of the rise of digital development on a global scale. The course integrates theoretical work and empirical cases, both historical and contemporary, to critically examine the political and cultural construction of technologies and their potential transformative powers. The examination of digital tools will include AI-powered facial recognition systems and data production and management, as well as associated understandings of modernity, development, rationality, and objectivity. In doing so, we will delve into the historical foundations, political visions, and conceptual roots of technological advancements in Africa, which have emerged as instruments of governance, means of development, and objects to be resisted.