African Perspectives on Data and Technology

Catalog description

Why do digital technologies entrench global inequalities, and how might they also offer opportunities for alternative futures, local creativity and appropriation? This class shifts the focus from the usual narratives on data and technology, which tend to revolve around Silicon Valley and its renowned tech innovators, to African contexts. It aims to understand, conceptualize, and analyze data and digital technologies through an African lens. We will rethink the temporality of the digital revolution by looking at the history of fiber optic undersea cables in Africa. We will consider how people consume data differently in rural contexts where access to the Internet is expensive. And we will discuss who is a tech worker in Africa, from software engineers and tech start-up entrepreneurs to gig economy workers, content moderators, and data annotators. The course involves readings by anthropologists, communication scholars, STS scholars, and political analysts; site visits; and encounters with technologists, social entrepreneurs, and community organizers in Rwanda. This course will be offered in January-Term 2026. This course will be taught in Rwanda and will count as an Away J-Term course.