Thanks for writing this Rose. Ambition is a moral imperitive. Adding you to my list of favorite African Accelerationists. 😀 At africanaccelerationism.com
This is thought provoking and a step in the right direction IMO is starting the conversations.
I am particularly captured by your thoughts on Ensuring African agency in the discussion and would like to add that from my perspective whilst we are rooting for African Experts to take the forefront in policy analysis and advice, we also advocate for the civic education and ultimately the participation of the African citizen at a grassroot level in the formulation of these policies.
As a stakeholder in the tech. field, I have observed that a lot of the policies formulated even with experts in the room suffer a disconnect from the real-world applications and needs. I would therefore call for a collaboration of both experience and expertise, which in my opinion would yield much better results.
Case in point(I will paraphrase a story I heard a while back regarding a technology project for farmers in Kenya) It goes as follows:-
- A technology company was looking to provide a solution that would facilitate farming processes by allowing farmers to gain access to government resources, track their produce performance and other such features. The researchers had intensively invested in talking to farmers and understanding their needs and they put in mega effort into the app. They were therefore dismayed when there was limited adoption to the app. They could not understand why the farmers were not using the App.
So they put their heads together and after much deliberation, they reached back out to the farmers to ask what the issue was. From which they learned that the average farmer used earlier mobile phones that could not download Apps and generally didn't see value in acquiring a smartphone just to use the app.
While the experts had done everything right, they ended up providing a solution that wasn't viable for the people they were trying to solve a problem for. The good news is, they ultimately went back and created a USSD application and the absorption rate was immediately higher. The bad news is, time and resources that could have been allocated to other helpful ventures or even into scaling the project were lost.
From my observations(albeit limited), there are incidents like the above more often than not because the conversations do not often bring in all the stakeholders. With tech being an intersectional field as is, I would hope we are looking at a future where we are working more collaboratively, not just in experience vs.expert spaces, but also in interdisciplinary ones.
Another incidence comes to mind, Theranos. I often wonder if that funding would have moved the needle for some under-funded research or support for cancer, alzeimer's among other major health pain points. I gather it was promising to solve real problems:- Faster and cheaper running of blood tests without compromising quality, Reduced queueing at hospital labs, accessible healthcare. In an idealistic world, had the experts and experience folks brought their heads together there may have been a birth of something that could have moved the needle. Considering we already have things like fitbits, at-home blood sugar and pressure testers, it was the perfect opportunity to move the scale on improving healthcare with technology but by the time the collaboration was happening and questions being raised, a lot had already been lost. Also, this involvement would have engaged the consumer in civic education regarding the flags it was raising on the way before they spent their hard earned money at the stores before the fake tech was recalled.
Afro-futurism in Black Pather for me was escapism. Yes, I enjoyed the film and will rewatch it regularly. However, as someone in the tech. space, I constantly find myself asking why the African story had to be some form of utopia, yet most of the tech-centered hollywood stuff usually happen in the real world. It seems to reinforce the 'special' narrative where only gifted people can do things, only aliens can construct Pyramids in Africa, the salvation of the continent relying on some 'hidden' gem that has never been colonised. It eerily reminded me of a series I watched growing up called 'Legend of the Hidden City'. I digress. Except we do know a country that wasn't colonised and it didn't pan out for them. Maybe there is also something in there to dissuade us from believing in our potential, in our abilities in that we only ever see able versions of ourselves in magical lands and fiction-in-fiction countries. It may be the fuel behind the apathy we experience when it comes to engaging to people for whom we are creating solutions. They have already adapted the belief that those things are beyond them and it heavily impacts who they vote in as leaders which imo directly and indirectly also impacts the policies and even how various stakeholders in the conversations approach and implement them.
It's definitely a broader conversation that I can't exhaustively pursue in thread, however, I hope this gives you a gist of my line on thought.
PS: I acknowledge I have biases and limited expertise since most of my knowledge relies on what I have read and heard whilst seeking to expand my knowledge. I am on a quest to democratise technology as I gather it may be the greatest advantage we can ever gain even as we enter into the Age of Technology. I also do not have that vast experience of most or all African countries and I am therefore being very speculative on the off-chance that the challenges on the continent are similar to those I have observed in my home country. I am open to correction and learning as that is how we keep moving forward.
Thanks again for this insightful piece! I hope to read more from you.
Ray -- thanks for these very thoughtful comments! You need your own substack to share these insights. Your perspective as a woman in tech on the ground in KE is invaluable, and the examples in your comment demonstrate well what happens when those perspectives are missing. I have experienced similar in my work across various domains of development, and this was in fact a big part of the motivation to found Mawazo!
Your point on the dominant of utopias in popular interpretations of African futures is also very interesting. In the development world, I have described this phenomenon as the chronic "ghettoization" of African issues, i.e. separated from mainstream conversations and fixated on niche topics. More on this hopefully in a future post.
Thanks for writing this Rose. Ambition is a moral imperitive. Adding you to my list of favorite African Accelerationists. 😀 At africanaccelerationism.com
Thought provoking, thanks so much for posting
This is thought provoking and a step in the right direction IMO is starting the conversations.
I am particularly captured by your thoughts on Ensuring African agency in the discussion and would like to add that from my perspective whilst we are rooting for African Experts to take the forefront in policy analysis and advice, we also advocate for the civic education and ultimately the participation of the African citizen at a grassroot level in the formulation of these policies.
As a stakeholder in the tech. field, I have observed that a lot of the policies formulated even with experts in the room suffer a disconnect from the real-world applications and needs. I would therefore call for a collaboration of both experience and expertise, which in my opinion would yield much better results.
Case in point(I will paraphrase a story I heard a while back regarding a technology project for farmers in Kenya) It goes as follows:-
- A technology company was looking to provide a solution that would facilitate farming processes by allowing farmers to gain access to government resources, track their produce performance and other such features. The researchers had intensively invested in talking to farmers and understanding their needs and they put in mega effort into the app. They were therefore dismayed when there was limited adoption to the app. They could not understand why the farmers were not using the App.
So they put their heads together and after much deliberation, they reached back out to the farmers to ask what the issue was. From which they learned that the average farmer used earlier mobile phones that could not download Apps and generally didn't see value in acquiring a smartphone just to use the app.
While the experts had done everything right, they ended up providing a solution that wasn't viable for the people they were trying to solve a problem for. The good news is, they ultimately went back and created a USSD application and the absorption rate was immediately higher. The bad news is, time and resources that could have been allocated to other helpful ventures or even into scaling the project were lost.
From my observations(albeit limited), there are incidents like the above more often than not because the conversations do not often bring in all the stakeholders. With tech being an intersectional field as is, I would hope we are looking at a future where we are working more collaboratively, not just in experience vs.expert spaces, but also in interdisciplinary ones.
Another incidence comes to mind, Theranos. I often wonder if that funding would have moved the needle for some under-funded research or support for cancer, alzeimer's among other major health pain points. I gather it was promising to solve real problems:- Faster and cheaper running of blood tests without compromising quality, Reduced queueing at hospital labs, accessible healthcare. In an idealistic world, had the experts and experience folks brought their heads together there may have been a birth of something that could have moved the needle. Considering we already have things like fitbits, at-home blood sugar and pressure testers, it was the perfect opportunity to move the scale on improving healthcare with technology but by the time the collaboration was happening and questions being raised, a lot had already been lost. Also, this involvement would have engaged the consumer in civic education regarding the flags it was raising on the way before they spent their hard earned money at the stores before the fake tech was recalled.
Afro-futurism in Black Pather for me was escapism. Yes, I enjoyed the film and will rewatch it regularly. However, as someone in the tech. space, I constantly find myself asking why the African story had to be some form of utopia, yet most of the tech-centered hollywood stuff usually happen in the real world. It seems to reinforce the 'special' narrative where only gifted people can do things, only aliens can construct Pyramids in Africa, the salvation of the continent relying on some 'hidden' gem that has never been colonised. It eerily reminded me of a series I watched growing up called 'Legend of the Hidden City'. I digress. Except we do know a country that wasn't colonised and it didn't pan out for them. Maybe there is also something in there to dissuade us from believing in our potential, in our abilities in that we only ever see able versions of ourselves in magical lands and fiction-in-fiction countries. It may be the fuel behind the apathy we experience when it comes to engaging to people for whom we are creating solutions. They have already adapted the belief that those things are beyond them and it heavily impacts who they vote in as leaders which imo directly and indirectly also impacts the policies and even how various stakeholders in the conversations approach and implement them.
It's definitely a broader conversation that I can't exhaustively pursue in thread, however, I hope this gives you a gist of my line on thought.
PS: I acknowledge I have biases and limited expertise since most of my knowledge relies on what I have read and heard whilst seeking to expand my knowledge. I am on a quest to democratise technology as I gather it may be the greatest advantage we can ever gain even as we enter into the Age of Technology. I also do not have that vast experience of most or all African countries and I am therefore being very speculative on the off-chance that the challenges on the continent are similar to those I have observed in my home country. I am open to correction and learning as that is how we keep moving forward.
Thanks again for this insightful piece! I hope to read more from you.
Ray -- thanks for these very thoughtful comments! You need your own substack to share these insights. Your perspective as a woman in tech on the ground in KE is invaluable, and the examples in your comment demonstrate well what happens when those perspectives are missing. I have experienced similar in my work across various domains of development, and this was in fact a big part of the motivation to found Mawazo!
Your point on the dominant of utopias in popular interpretations of African futures is also very interesting. In the development world, I have described this phenomenon as the chronic "ghettoization" of African issues, i.e. separated from mainstream conversations and fixated on niche topics. More on this hopefully in a future post.
Thank you!