The Politics of Technology in Africa

Iginio Gagliardone
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The Politics of Technology in Africa

As more Africans get online, Information and Communication Tech-

nologies (ICTs) are increasingly hailed for their transformative poten-
tial. Yet, the fascination for the possibilities of promoting more inclusive
forms of development in the information age have obfuscated the reality
of the complex negotiations among political and economic actors who
are seeking to use technology in their competition for power. Building
on over ten years of research in Ethiopia, Iginio Gagliardone investi-
gates the relationship between politics, development, and technological
adoption in Africa’s second-most populous country and its largest
recipient of development aid. The emphasis the book places on the
‘technopolitics’ of ICTs and on their ability to embody and enact
political goals, offers a strong, and empirically grounded, counter-
argument to prevalent approaches to the study of technology and devel-
opment, that can be applied to other cases in Africa and beyond.

iginio gagliardone teaches Media and Communication at the Uni-

versity of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and is Associate Research
Fellow in New Media and Human Rights at the University of Oxford,
UK. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and has
spent years living and working in Africa, including for UNESCO. His
research focuses on the relationship between new media, political
change, and human development, and on the emergence of distinctive
models of the information society in the Global South. He has exten-
sively published in communication, development studies, and African
studies journals, and his work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese,
French, and Italian.
The Politics of Technology
in Africa
Communication, Development, and
Nation-Building in Ethiopia

Iginio Gagliardone
University of the Witwatersrand / University of Oxford
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107177857
© Iginio Gagliardone 2016
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Names: Gagliardone, Iginio, author.
Title: The politics of technology in Africa : communication, development, and
nation-building in Ethiopia / Iginio Gagliardone.
Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016021107 | ISBN 9781107177857 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Telecommunication–Political aspects–Ethiopia. |
Telecommunication–Government policy–Ethiopia. |
Information technology–Political aspects–Ethiopia. |
Information technology–Government policy–Ethiopia. | Ethiopia–Politics and
government–1974-1991. | Ethiopia–Politics and government–1991–
Classification: LCC HE8479.Z5 G34 2016 | DDC 384.30963–dc23 LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021107
ISBN 978-1-107-17785-7 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
To Nicole
 Contents

Acknowledgments page viii

1 Introduction 1
2 Technopolitics, Communication Technologies, and
Development 13
3 Avoiding Politics: International and Local Discourses
on ICTs 23
4 A Quest for Hegemony: The Use of ICTs in Support of the
Ethiopian National Project 50
5 Ethiopia’s Developmental and Sovereign Technopolitical
Regimes 79
6 Resisting Alternative Technopolitical Regimes 114
7 ICT for Development, Human Rights, and the Changing
Geopolitical Order 134
8 Conclusion 155

Bibliography 165
Index 178

vii
 Acknowledgments

I have always been fascinated by how technology evolves and, throughout

its evolution, opens new opportunities for us to understand the individ-
uals, groups, and societies who designed and made use of it.
When I first stumbled upon one of Schoolnet’s plasma TV screens in a
secondary school in Addis Ababa, I could not resist but start asking
questions about how that apparently costly and complex system came
about, who designed it, and what else it was connected to. At the time – it
was March 2005 – I did not know this book would have emerged from
that first encounter, but I am still deeply fascinated by how much
technology – if properly asked – can tell us about how a society thinks
of itself and its future.
Along this ten-year journey I have hugely benefited from the time,
advice, and wisdom of numerous people. Firstly, I want to thank the
many individuals who generously agreed to sit with me and patiently
explain why they did what they did, what influenced them, and what they
envisioned through their activity. Especially in its initial phases, this book
required collecting and trying to piece together many pieces of a puzzle
only a few people were trying to solve. This meant I often had to come
back to the same individuals and ask more, test with them whether an
apparently promising connection was pointing in the right direction, or
other avenues should be pursued instead. Some of these individuals are
named throughout the book, and their words are reported as often as
possible, also to offer the reader a glimpse of our meetings and conversa-
tions. Others asked to remain anonymous, but I am deeply thankful for
their generosity and willingness to share their views and information with
me, often in trying circumstances.
This book is also the result of many revisions and transformations
and I am indebted to the people who contributed to shaping it, in one
form or another. I am grateful to Robin Mansell, who offered continuous
and precious feedback when this book was still a PhD thesis in the
making. I also want to thank the many colleagues and readers who
accessed various sections and versions of the book and provided precious
viii
 Acknowledgments ix

comments: Christopher Clapham, Monroe Price, Emanuele Fantini,

Matti Pohjonen, Sharath Srinivasan, Marco DiNunzio. I was very fortu-
nate to be able to regularly visit Ethiopia until the very last stages of
writing and to engage in numerous conversations with colleagues at
Addis Ababa University and other research institutions in Ethiopia.
I am particularly grateful to Zenebe Beyene and Abdissa Zerai, with
whom I had the pleasure to collaborate on numerous research projects
and develop a rich intellectual partnership.
Finally, I want to thank Nicole Stremlau, my partner and fellow
researcher. Without her support, ideas, and encouragement, this book
would probably not exist.
1 Introduction

On 8 November 2006, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation

and the Chinese telecom giant ZTE signed the largest agreement in the
history of telecommunications in Africa. Backed by the China Develop-
ment Bank, ZTE offered a loan of $1.5 billion to overhaul and expand
Ethiopia’s telecommunication system. Six years later, another $1.6 billion
was entrusted to ZTE and Huawei, one of China’s most successful
multinational corporations, to continue the expansion, bringing Chinese
government support for Ethiopia’s Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) sector to over $3 billion.
Despite the unprecedented investments, however, Ethiopia has con-
tinued to score at the bottom of regional and global rankings in terms of
access to ICTs. In 2014, less than 3% of the population was regularly
using the Internet and only 31% had a mobile phone. In neighbouring
Kenya, the same figures were 43% and 74% respectively (ITU, 2015).
While Chinese support has somehow contributed to expanding access
(in 2006, when the contract with ZTE was signed mobile connectivity
was at 1.1% of the population, making Ethiopia the country with the least
access to mobiles in Africa), the quality of the service provided to cus-
tomers has remained appalling, so bad in fact that even tightly controlled
official government media in Ethiopia have been allowed to criticize
technical glitches and incompetence.
And yet, the Ethiopian government has developed some of the most
ambitious projects in Africa employing ICTs to support development
and improve service delivery, even in the most remote parts of the
country. Woredanet and Schoolnet, the two projects that are at the core
of this book, have employed satellite connectivity and the same protocol
the Internet is based upon, to expand the reach and capacity of the state
over Ethiopia’s vast territory. Woredanet, which stands for ‘network
of district (woreda) administrations’ has been used to improve and
straighten communication between the centre and the peripheries, enab-
ling ministers and cadres in Addis Ababa to videoconference with
regional woreda offices and instruct them on what they should be doing
1
2 Introduction

and how. Schoolnet has used a similar architecture to ensure that every
secondary school student in the country, in urban and in rural areas, has
access to education of the same quality, even if this had to come in the
form of pre-recorded classes broadcast through plasma TV screens.
In a country well known to the world for its food insecurity, the state
has profoundly innovated how food demand and supply are matched,
creating the first commodity exchange in Africa. The Ethiopian Com-
modity Exchange (ECX) has used ICTs to link the trading floor in
Addis Ababa with grading centres, warehouses, and display sites all
around the country, as well as to allow inventories to be updated in
real time, payments to be made the day after purchase, and information
to be provided to different audiences through the web, the radio, and
mobile phones.
This commitment to investing in new technologies for development,
however, has been matched by an equally strong resistance towards uses
of ICTs that could challenge central power and destabilize the country.
In 2005, Ethiopian protesters challenging the results of the parliamentary
elections made use of new and traditional media in ways that closely
resemble those that would later be reported during the ‘Arab Spring’,
when new media received significant attention as tools for circulating
slogans and coordinating protests. Similar to their peers in Tunisia and
Egypt in 2011 (Wilson & Dunn, 2011), Ethiopian protesters often resorted
to ‘media relays’, communicating information through a medium other
than the one on which they had received that information from, often with
the aim of reaching those who had little or no access to the newest
communication technologies. Before and after the 2005 elections, com-
mentaries and political manifestos published online were printed and
turned into leaflets. Mobile phones, especially SMS, were used to mobilize
people in real time and disseminate calls for action posted in web forums.
Despite these types of uses of the media attracting very little international
attention, they caused very harsh responses within the country. Ethiopia is
now the nation in Africa that most pervasively filters the Internet and
surveils communications. Most opposition websites are not accessible in
Ethiopia and the use of proxies and anonymizers have been made increas-
ingly difficult (Opennet Initiative, 2007). Companies headquartered in
China, Italy, and the United Kingdom have offered equipment and expert-
ise to the Ethiopian government to surveil communication and even spy
on opposition leaders living abroad (Human Rights Watch, 2014). In
April 2014, six bloggers were arrested with the accusation of ‘plan[ning]
to destabilize the country using social media’.
Explaining the adoption, evolution, and re-shaping of ICTs in Ethiopia
therefore presents a challenging puzzle. Ethiopia has very low levels of
 Development and Politics 3

Internet penetration and yet some of the most severe measures in Africa
to contain its destabilizing potential. It has charted new avenues of col-
laboration with emerging donors, especially with China, but also con-
tinues to be Africa’s largest recipient of development aid from traditional,
Western donors. It has championed uses of ICTs that have later appeared
elsewhere in Africa, including videoconferencing for government com-
munication in Rwanda, and ICT-enabled commodities exchanges across
the continent, and yet it is considered backward when it comes to innov-
ation and ICTs.
This book offers some solutions to this puzzle and, by examining the
case of Ethiopia, sheds light on some of the complexities that have
characterized the evolution of ICTs in Africa. How, and to what extent,
have the visions championed by international organizations, technology
entrepreneurs, and philanthropists – that ICTs could transform develop-
ment processes and be a force for progress – found realization in Africa?
Why have some of the discourses characterizing ‘ICT for development’
policy and practice been embraced while others have been actively
resisted? And, more broadly, how can the innovations that have emerged
in Africa, making original uses of ICTs to address local challenges, be
studied and understood in their own terms?
Answers to these questions will be provided not only by engaging with
the empirical material collected in Ethiopia, but also by emphasizing
the role of politics in shaping technology and development. In develop-
ment circles, ICTs have too often been treated as neutral tools that can
optimally contribute to a set of pre-defined indicators, including sup-
porting economic growth, enlarging the educated population, or democ-
ratizing institutions. This book challenges the assumptions that ICTs are
simply passively received in African countries and act as a force for
development. It suggests instead that ICTs should be analysed as sites
of multiple conflicts, and understood for their ability to embed values
and visions, which can be accepted or contested, and can serve to quietly,
but not less effectively, enact political plans.

Development and Politics

The optimism that emerged in the 1990s that ICTs would redefine
politics has been partially eroded by the realization that traditional forms
of politics are still able to shape or re-shape technology, even in countries
with limited technical capabilities. The reasons for this change in attitude
are both conceptual and historical. Despite having been proclaimed dead
on multiple occasions, techno-determinism has consistently proven its
ability to come back to life every time a new technology recognized as a
4 Introduction

game changer appears. Techno-determinists tend to shape the terms of

early debates, until their faith that social problems can find technical
solutions is challenged by the much slower pace at which technologically
enhanced change actually occurs and by the ways in which old systems
and logics adapt and thrive in new scenarios.1
The historical roots of this shift have been well summarized by Milton
Mueller. As he has pointed out, ‘the explosion of ideas, services, and
expression associated with the Internet’s growth in the mid-1990s
happened because states weren’t prepared for it and because states wer-
en’t in charge’ (Mueller, 2010: 185). Since then, however, states seem to
have learned their lessons and have been fighting hard to assert their
control in the digital era.
While the 1990s were dominated by the ‘digital divide’ rhetoric,
framing the new global challenge as a matter of access to the same
technologies that were driving the digital revolution in parts of the
Western world, the 2010s are characterized by the astonishing diversity
of ways in which different countries have blended old and new
technologies.
This unique combination of ICTs, politics, and culture is not new.
It rather represents one of the latest incarnations in a long series of
technological innovations that, despite being celebrated for their revo-
lutionary potential, have been reshaped to fit in sociopolitical net-
works that are different from those of their origin, becoming both
the objects and the subjects of change. Just as the configuration of
electric grids in nineteenth-century Europe depended less on tech-
nical constraints than on political ideologies (Hughes, 1983), and
the design of nuclear reactors in post-war France was determined
by the tensions between Cold War politics and energy efficiency
(Hecht, 1998), so have ICTs in the new millennium been caught up
in multiple conflicts between competing conceptions of the role of
technology in society.
Most studies that have examined these conflicts in developing coun-
tries, as this book does, have relied on categories and dichotomies of
global relevance, such as authoritarianism vs. democracy, corruption vs.
transparency, or closure vs. openness to chart this diversity. Indices
ranking countries according to their e-readiness and Internet freedom

1
Ithiel De Sola Pool (1983), Alvin Toffler (1980), and Nicholas Negroponte (1995), for
example, have been instrumental in shaping the imagery of the information revolution
before empirical evidence could offer an indication of the actual impact of ICTs. For a
more critical account of techno-determinism see, for example, Hindman (2008) and
Morozov (2012).
 Ethiopia as a Laboratory 5

have proliferated.2 This approach has allowed comparisons to be made

across nations and regions (Groshek, 2009; Howard, 2010), and the
mapping of new trends, including correlations between diffusion of ICTs
and political behaviours (Bratton, 2013; Nisbet, Stoycheff, & Pearce,
2012). Privileging these typologies, however, has also meant overlooking
what is unique in the interactions between specific political cultures
and new communication technologies: for example, how a government’s
conception of citizenship or of the nation may influence the adoption and
adaptation of ICTs; or how ‘democratic’ change may occur through
processes and institutions that are different from those characterizing
Western democracies but express other conceptions of governmentality.
This book advances a different set of tools to study why ICTs are being
re-shaped across the globe and focuses on national politics and dis-
courses, those arousing people’s passions and informing national debates,
to explain the adoption and adaptation of technology. This does not mean
suggesting other dimensions or approaches should be dismissed as irrele-
vant. As the Ethiopian case makes clear, the authoritarian nature of the
country’s government can explain why it has been able to realize its vision
of ICTs and marginalize alternative ones, but, alone, can say little of the
specific shape ICTs have taken at the national level.

Ethiopia as a Laboratory
Contemporary Ethiopia offers challenging puzzles not just to those
studying technology adoption and adaptation, but to any researcher
interested in understanding the relationship between development and
politics. Since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) took power in 1991, after almost two decades of civil war, the
country has embarked on a series of ambitious experiments at the eco-
nomic, political, and institutional levels that have produced dramatically
divergent views on the failures and successes of the new regime.
Similar to post-genocide Rwanda (Fisher, 2015; Hintjens, 2014), it
has become increasingly common to come across articles, reports, and
commentaries on Ethiopia that seem to be referring not to the same,
but to two different countries. One is a closed, authoritarian state,
governed through fear by an ethnic minority. The other Ethiopia is a

2
See for example Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net Index (https://freedomhouse.org/
issues/internet-freedom) or the World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index
(www.weforum.org/reports/global-information-technology-report-2014). Last accessed
21 December 2014.
6 Introduction

developmental state that has achieved sustained ‘double digit’ growth

and has significantly improved access to basic services.3
The discourses on ‘ethnic federalism’, ‘revolutionary democracy’,
and ‘developmental state’, which are discussed at length throughout
the book, have been one of the sources of this polarization. They each
define a different aspect of the EPRDF’s complex state- and nation-
building strategy, informing Ethiopia’s institutional set-up, mode of
government, and economic policy. But they all share a similar origin
as locally driven attempts to adapt development strategies derived from
other countries considered similar to Ethiopia, displaying a tendency
towards emulation that has characterized many Ethiopian regimes in
the past (Clapham, 2006). Framed by the EPRDF as non-negotiable
principles informing its complex plan of state transformation, they have
produced strong resistance at the national level, and scepticism among
international observers.
Different from other governments in Africa, whose policies have more
amply swayed to follow the trends that have characterized the inter-
national development agenda, the EPRDF-led government has aggres-
sively protected its independence in defining core aspects of its political
and development strategy. This does not mean Ethiopian leaders have
been deaf towards all donors’ demands and international pressures. The
Ethiopian government has shown, for example, significant commitment
towards the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, and has
been praised for its progress in attaining most of them by or before the
agreed deadline (UNDP, 2015). What the EPRDF has sought to
achieve is a delicate balance between loyalty to the principles that have
shaped the guerrilla war that eventually led it to power, many of which
are rooted in Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and adaptation to pressures
deriving from its status of one of the largest recipients of development
aid in the world.
This effort has produced a distinctive development trajectory, but has
also led to dramatic contradictions. The evolution of the EPRDF’s
strategy towards the media is a striking example. When the EPRDF first

3
While in the case of Rwanda, polarized views have dominated both policy and scholarly
debates (Fisher, 2015; Hintjens, 2014), in Ethiopia this divergence has affected more the
former than the latter. Exchanges like those that followed the death of Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi suggest competing views do exist among scholars also (de Waal, 2013a,
2013b; Lefort, 2013), but a middle ground has emerged among those who have been
writing about Ethiopia, or at least a willingness to engage with the many contradictions
that have characterized the project pursued by the EPRDF. Many authors that have
sought to build this common terrain are mentioned throughout the book, belonging to
different generations, from Christopher Clapham, to Sarah Vaughan, Paulos Chanie, and
Jean-Nicholas Bach.
 A History of the Future 7

came to power it committed what could retrospectively be identified as

the ‘original sin’ in the contemporary history of communication in Ethi-
opia: it opened the space for debate but refused to engage with the very
debates it had allowed to bloom.
Responding to international pressures and to the determination to
signal, nationally and internationally, its difference from previous
regimes, the EPRDF initiated a significant liberalization of the press.
This process, however, created opportunities for individuals who used
to work for the previous regimes or belonged to other political move-
ments the EPRDF had excluded from power, to attack the new leaders
and advance alternative political agendas. Although the criticism took
on an increasingly adversarial tone, the EPRDF leadership stuck to its
policy, ignoring dissenting voices and labelling them as ‘anti-peace’ and
‘anti-constitution’.4 This polarization and unwillingness to seeking
engagement would later poison also the debates emerging on the Inter-
net, leading ‘old politics’ to capture ‘new media’.

A History of the Future

ICT for development scholars and practitioners are generally interested
not only in the current applications of ICTs but also their future poten-
tial. They tend to begin with an assessment of a set of challenges and
consider how technology can offer a possible solution (but in some not
too exceptional cases it can also work the other way around, and tech-
nology becomes a solution in search of a problem). Or they may start
from a normative standpoint – e.g. the need for an unrestricted flow of
information – and envision how technology may help enforcing it. This
tendency has had the advantage of offering citizens, both in developed
and in developing countries, new ways of imagining the future. It has
similarly had the disadvantage of overlooking the friction created by
existing imbalances of power and the influence of the communication
ecology in which new artefacts become immersed.
To keep past, present, and future together, this book combines insights
from three scholarly traditions that take into account both how experi-
ences with previous technologies influence the adoption or rejection of
later ones and how new technologies enable individuals and groups
to envision and shape their world. First, it is grounded in the work of
historians of technology who have examined technologies of national
relevance and scale and the systems of relations in which technology is

4
See, for example, The Ethiopian Herald, ‘Editorial’, 6 June 1991, p. 7.
8 Introduction

immersed. The concepts of large technical systems, technopolitics, and

technopolitical regimes are incorporated in the study of ICTs to counter-
balance the lack of attention paid by ICT for development studies to the
systemic nature of new technologies; to their being a component, often
the most visible, of larger networks of national and international insti-
tutions, corporations, laws, political parties, and information carriers,
which are strongly influenced by existing imbalances in the distribution
of power and resources. These notions help to take the dialectical under-
standing of the relationship between technology and organizations
developed by information system theorists (Orlikowski, 1992; Suchman,
1994) to a level that analyses interactions among technology, govern-
ments, and other political actors who are attempting to influence tech-
nology adoption and adaptation nationally and internationally.
A second building block in the analysis of the relationship between
technology, politics, and development is constituted by the studies of
networks carried out by scholars of international relations. Miles Kahler
(2009), Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), and Milton Mueller
(2010), among others, have explored how ideas diffuse at the inter-
national level and how they are embraced or resisted by national actors.
Examining the discourses embedded in new technologies and how
groups or institutions advocate their selection is an essential step in
understanding why and how ICTs are accepted, rejected, or reshaped.
Looking at these discourses shows how technology is a means not only
to do new things or do things differently, but also to promote new forms
of imagination.
Finally, the African studies literature provides the instruments to take
into adequate consideration the dynamics that characterize political com-
petition and processes of state and nation building on the continent.
The literature on contemporary Ethiopia constitutes a cornerstone for
the analysis of how a political project became embedded into technical
artefacts (Aalen, 2002; Assefa & Tegegne, 2007; Gudina, 2003; Ottaway,
2003; Pausewang et al., 2002; Stremlau, 2008; Tegegne, 1998; Turton,
2006; Young, 1997), but other studies on the role and behaviour of the
state in Africa help explain the relationship with donors, the international
community and other stakeholders competing for power, and for the
hegemony of their ideas. The concept of extraversion elaborated by Jean
Francois Bayart (2009; 2000) is adopted to understand how the Ethiopian
government has been able to exploit the contradictions characterizing the
development agenda to support its own political ambitions. Similarly, the
literature on developmental states in Africa (Booth & Golooba-Mutebi,
2012; De Waal, 2012; Kelsall, 2013; Leftwich, 1995; Mkandawire, 2001)
offers a critical framework to understand how Ethiopia, but also other
 Exploring Technical Artefacts and Technological Visions 9

countries on the continent, Rwanda in particular, have progressively elab-

orated a state-centric vision of the information society.
Benefiting from debates in different disciplines, this book also aims to
reach different audiences. ICT for development scholars are the primary
target but, by using lenses developed by Africanists, historians, and
International Relations (IR) scholars, this book aims to engage them on
a new terrain, where there are fewer concerns about what technology
can do for development, and more attention is paid to understanding
the conflictual process through which ICTs are already shaped and
re-shaped by a variety of actors in developing countries. The analysis of
technologies of international relevance can also offer new insights to IR
scholars concerned with understanding the interactions between inter-
national and local norms and ideas. The focus in this area has largely
been on the reasons that motivate a successful or unsuccessful socializa-
tion of local actors to new ideas, but fewer questions have been asked
about how these ideas can be reworked in practice. Looking at how
discourses are embedded into technical artefacts allows a better under-
standing of which aspects of these artefacts are magnified, which are
marginalized, and how they integrate with existing ones in more or less
coherent ways. Historians of technology, for their part, have provided
powerful tools to study what at different times have been called new
technologies (Wu, 2010), but, despite some exceptions, their research
has often been limited to processes of innovation rather than the transfer
of technology. Studying the relationship between international and
national actors when implementing a ‘new technology’ can open new
scenarios to understand which forces are at play when a technology is
inserted into contexts that are profoundly different from those of its
origin. Africanists, apart from few exceptions (Hyden, Leslie, & Ogun-
dimu, 2002; Nyamnjoh, 2005; Stremlau, 2012), have kept their distance
from ICTs, and when they have included them in their analysis they
have tended to treat ICTs as something to be understood through
frameworks that are different from those that have been successfully
adopted to explain the politics of the continent.

Exploring Technical Artefacts and Technological Visions

This book has taken shape over almost ten years. My first visits to
secondary schools where Schoolnet had been installed date back to the
early months of 2005. The conversations with the Ethiopian bloggers
who have been seeking to use the Internet to create a space for engage-
ment in an otherwise very polarized environment have continued until
the very last draft of this book. Overall, more than one hundred
10 Introduction

interviews were carried out with the politicians and technocrats who
envisioned and realized Woredanet and Schoolnet as well as with jour-
nalists, opposition leaders, and members of national and international
NGOs and of international organizations who practiced and advocated
uses of ICTs that tried to oppose, patch, or complement those advanced
by the government of Ethiopia. Over time new actors started to appear in
the complex ecosystem created by ICTs in Ethiopia. From Chinese
engineers working on the ZTE and Huawei expansion projects, to
experts of cybersecurity trying to detect the techniques used by the
Ethiopian government to spy on Ethiopians in the country and abroad,
and disenchanted technocrats who had grown progressively tired of the
centralized approach towards developing Ethiopia’s information society.
I sought to include all their voices in the narration of the evolution of
ICTs in Ethiopia; but I also had to leave some of them anonymous, given
the sensitivity of some subjects.
I conducted numerous field visits to Woredanet and Schoolnet sites in
the regions of Tigray, Amhara, Oromiya, and the Southern Nations
Nationalities and People (SNNPR) to understand how the two systems
operated in practice and how their users perceived them. This evidence
was complemented by the collection of archival material in the form of
policies, project documents, newspapers articles, and blog entries.
The most challenging and fascinating component of the research has
been reconstructing how certain visions of technology’s potential and
its risks influenced technology adoption and adaptation. This was
achieved through a process of iterative comparison between concepts
emerging from interviews and other textual material (e.g. field notes,
project documents), and observations of how technical artefacts actu-
ally took shape. This going ‘back and forth’ between the technical and
the discursive not only allowed capturing the conflicts emerging
throughout the process of technological appropriation, how technology
could incorporate specific political plans despite the frequent claims of
its neutrality, but also forced political actors to reconsider their visions
and ambitions.

Plan of the Book

The book is divided into eight chapters. The next chapter introduces
the concepts of technopolitics and technopolitical regimes, and
explains how they can offer innovative lenses to understand the rela-
tionship between development, technology, and politics. Chapters 3
and 4 examine the discourses that influenced the appropriation and
adaptation of ICTs in Ethiopia. Chapter 3 analyses the discourses
 Plan of the Book 11

advanced by the international organizations that played the most

important role in ‘bringing’ ICTs to Ethiopia and the reactions they
produced among various local actors. In addition to illustrating how
the same technologies could produce a variety of interpretations, the
chapter also roots these interpretations in long-term paths of technol-
ogy adoption that characterized how rulers in Ethiopia approached the
telephone, the radio, and the first computers. It concludes by indicat-
ing how local actors, other than the state, were marginalized in their
attempts to influence the trajectory of ICTs in the country, leaving the
government as the major player in making ICTs what they later
became in Ethiopia. Chapter 4 examines more specifically the dis-
courses advanced by the Ethiopian government that have influenced
the development of ICTs in the country. Similar to the previous
chapter, it does not concentrate exclusively on the present, but
engages in a longer term analysis of how these discourses originated,
dating back from when the current leaders were fighting against the
military dictatorship of the Derg which ruled Ethiopia between
1974 and 1991, and evolved, interacting with new challenges and
new opportunities.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn to more technical aspects. Chapter 5 investi-
gates how a developmental and a sovereign technopolitical regime
emerged in Ethiopia. It analyses the design and functioning of Wor-
edanet and Schoolnet, explaining how specific features characterizing
the two systems were not simply motivated by technical issues, but were
the enactments of political goals through the use of technology. It also
explains how the shaping of telecommunications in Ethiopia and the
resistance towards the liberalization of the sector and towards poten-
tially destabilizing uses of ICTs was rooted in the discourses on ethnic
federalism, revolutionary democracy, and the developmental state ana-
lysed in the previous chapters. Chapter 6 analyses the technopolitical
regimes that actors other than the state tried to develop in order to
oppose, complement, or patch the national regimes. These attempts,
and some of artefacts and practices they originated, indicate how polit-
ical conflicts can be fought through technology.
Chapter 7 analyses the most recent evolutions of technopolitics in
Ethiopia, including the repercussions of the unprecedented support pro-
vided by China to telecommunications in Ethiopia and of the increasing
securitization of development, which has characterized the approach of
Western donors, especially in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001.
Chapter 8 concludes by reflecting on how the concepts of technopo-
litics and technopolitical regimes can be applied to other cases of
12 Introduction

technological re-shaping, in developing and developed countries. It uses

the trajectory of ICTs in Ethiopia to chart broader changes that have
affected communication, politics, and development in Africa, from the
ability of states to regain control over ICTs and asserting sovereignty in
the information space to the shifting balance between human rights and
development.
2 Technopolitics, Communication
Technologies, and Development

The emphasis on policy issues as technical issues [has led to] a narrowing
of acceptable topics for public debate. This amounts to the “depoliticizing” of
public life, such that much political debate becomes merely a war among
competing experts, or an exercise in the manipulation of symbols, a wholly
theatrical celebration of rival images and icons, all rather than a collective
and substantive deliberation about a common societal direction.
(Pippin, 1995, p. 44)

Literature on the politics of technology abounds, and yet the popular

discourse on new technologies tends to overlook this aspect and privilege
describing the functions technology can serve, as if there was consensus
on what technology should be for, and it was just issues of efficiency that
need being discussed among experts.1
Studying ICTs as components of technopolitical regimes, on the con-
trary, means taking into consideration how technology can become an
instrument of politics, and how political ambitions interact with techno-
logical opportunities and constraints and evolve as a result of this inter-
action. It forces the researcher to ‘plunge’ into the technical artefact
(Callon, 2009) and question technological determinism, while avoiding
the excesses of social constructivism, which lead to explaining technology
simply through analysing a society and its politics.
A technopolitical regime is both the medium and the outcome of a
negotiation between a specific technology, a cultural and political con-
text, and the actors that animate it and compete for power. It ‘consists
of a configuration of heterogeneous elements, combining mainly tech-
nical materialities, discourses, texts, rules, procedures, plans [. . .] – the
list is open – which are rendered mutually interdependent and support

1
For an overview of the subject on the politics of technology, from large technical systems
(LTS) to ICTs see for example Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch (1987), Feenberg (1991, 1999),
Hecht (2001), Hughes (1983), Joerges (1988), Mansell & Silverstone (1996), Pippin
(1995), Weinberger (2001), Winner (1980), Wu (2010).

13
14 Technopolitics, Communication Technologies, and Development

one another’ (Callon, 2009, p. xiii). A technopolitical regime is not a

construct ‘discovered’ by an observer, but is rather the result of layers
of decisions made by actors tied to denser or looser networks, and
employing technology to achieve political goals in ways that politics alone
would not allow.
The emergence of a technopolitical regime is not a linear process. It is
the result of conflicts between conceptions of technology and society,
actors competing to assert power, and technological artefacts resisting
or allowing change to flow through them. As Joseph Schumpeter (1954)
first explained, and Tim Wu more recently reminded us, ‘innovation
involves a continuous state of unrest, is no benignly gradual process, but
a merciless cycle of destruction and birth’ (Wu, 2010, p. 27). Referring
to these assemblages of technology, discourses, and actors as regimes is
meant to capture this conflictual nature. In Hecht’s definition, regime
indicates the contested nature of power, the ideologies guiding the actors
who drive them, and conveys the idea of a regimen, a prescription not
just about technologies, policies, and practices, but also about broader
visions of the sociopolitical order (Hecht, 1998, p. 18).
The term technopolitical regime was first introduced by Gabrielle
Hecht to examine the relationship between nuclear power and national
identity in France (Hecht, 1998, 2001) and here I extend it to the study
of ICTs at a macro level, as technologies of national relevance and
scale. Given the unique nature of ICTs, the temptation to coin a new
term such as informational or info-political regime has been strong, but
has ultimately been discarded. A focus on information alone would
risk downplaying the important technical component of these assem-
blages. Even more importantly, applying a concept grounded in the
history of technology tradition to the study of ICT and development
may encourage researchers to take a longer view in the analysis of
‘new technologies’, counterbalancing the lack historical depth that has
characterized Information and Communication Technology for Devel-
opment (ICT4D) as a discipline.
When studying technopolitical regimes based on ICTs, however, one
element does need special attention. These regimes produce a particular
type of outcome: information and meaning. As Robin Mansell and Roger
Silverstone pointed out, echoing Giddens (1984), in the technological
realm ICTs are unique as ‘they are characterized by their double articu-
lation: they are both machines and media’ (Mansell & Silverstone, 1996,
p. 9). Technopolitical regimes built around ICTs are not just invested
with meaning, as discourses filter in and shape technologies (as well as
being shaped by technologies). Nor do they simply produce meaning by
virtue of the place they occupy in a specific narrative they contribute to
 Networks of Technologies 15

maintaining (as shown by the role of nuclear plants in the French project
of grandeur described by Hecht or by the many references to ICTs as
‘liberation technologies’ in the process of democratization of politics and
individual empowerment). They are ‘the means (the media) whereby
public and private meanings are mutually negotiated’ (Silverstone et al.
in Mansell & Silverstone, 1996, p. 28). The content that is, or can be,
conveyed through a specific regime is its constitutive component.
To sum up, a technopolitical regime can be considered as constituted of
three coexisting and interrelated components, which can each be studied
as networks of similar elements: a network of technologies, a network of
discourses, and a network of actors. A technopolitical regime connects in
actuality nodes in each of these networks that are potentially connected
with other technologies, discourses, and actors. It can be thought of as a
network of networks. Once the links among these nodes are strengthened
in ways that make each node part of a more cohesive whole (a technopo-
litical regime), these nodes start to influence one another, or, more pre-
cisely, their more frequent and significant interactions are more likely to
influence all nodes that are part of a technopolitical regime.

Networks of Technologies
Thomas Hughes (Hughes, 1983) was the first to clearly illustrate how
the ‘same’ technology can take on different shapes in different locations.
He described this phenomenon by borrowing the concept of style from
art historians, emphasizing the possibility of variations of the same tech-
nology across cultural and political environments. In the case of electri-
fication, for example, he explained how the distribution of power plants
in London and Berlin differed for no particular technical reasons, but
responded to differences in the political and regulatory regimes of each
country; conservative Britain, where particularistic interests prevailed
over the ability of central power to regulate the market, and socially
democratic Germany where the state took a greater role as a champion
of electrification (Hughes, 1983).
Even within the same country, different regimes may emerge and
compete for the definition of a technology’s standards and uses. In the
case of Hecht’s research on France’s nuclear programme between the
1950s and the 1970s, for example, she identified the emergence of two
regimes, one nationalist and one nationalized, focussed on a different set
of goals, grounded in different institutions, and pursuing a different kind
of politics (Hecht, 1998). The ‘same’ technology was captured by com-
peting actors and discourses, profoundly affecting the way it was used
and the shape it took.
16 Technopolitics, Communication Technologies, and Development

The number and nature of technopolitical regimes cannot be defined a

priori, although it is possible to reconstruct their features and purposes
through investigating the distribution of power in a given national con-
text, the discourses permeating it, and the actors advancing these inter-
ests. As will be fully explained later, a technopolitical regime is both the
expression of how power is distributed in a particular national context as
well as an instrument for the exercise of power.
Historians of technology have identified in the problem-solving capacity
of a technopolitical regime what distinguishes it from less coherent assem-
blages of technology and politics. As Hughes described, referring to large
technical systems (LTS), a concept that pre-dates the notion of techno-
political regime and was similarly employed to refer to the interconnected-
ness between the technical, the social, and the political, ‘technological
systems solve problems or fulfil goals using whatever means are available
and appropriate; the problems have to do mostly with reordering the
physical world in ways considered useful or desirable, at least by those
designing or employing a technological system’ (Hughes, 1987, p. 53).
This does not mean they do it successfully. Technopolitical regimes, as
well as LTS, often develop in messier and more complex ways than
originally expected; they have negative externalities, and are difficult to
control and coordinate. Quite ironically, as pointed out by Joerges, ‘retro-
spective studies of LTS show that they never develop according to the
designs and projections of dominant actors: LTS evolve behind the backs
of the system builders’ (Joerges, 1988, p. 26). However, because of their
scale and scope, they tend to evolve even against the odds of their com-
plexity, in ways smaller artefacts might not do. Railway systems or grids of
nuclear plants would be much more difficult to dispose of than smaller
technical objects, and would tend to be patched or rethought, rather than
abandoned if problems arose.2

Networks of Discourses
The disciplines that have examined the relationship between technolo-
gies and societies, from the sociology to the history of technology,
from information systems to media studies, have tended to approach
technologies both in terms of their material and discursive components.

2
Another way of looking at LTS/technopolitical regimes has been to consider them as
mega-projects, which can be considered as large-scale investments attracting significant
public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and
budgets. For the literature on mega-projects see for example Bruzelius, Flyvbjerg, &
Rothengatter (2002) and Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, & Rothengatter (2003).
 Networks of Discourses 17

This discursive element of technology can be appreciated in two differ-

ent, but interrelated and co-present, ways.
First, discourses are what invest the material world with meaning
(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985)., meanings are attached to artefacts as descrip-
tions, manuals, and texts, telling users about the appropriate ways of
operating a specific technical object. In many cases a technology, when it
is marketed or when it is proposed, as has initially been the case for ICTs
in developing countries, is not even visible. Only the potentials and
expected uses described by the advocates of its application are. As Pinch,
Ahmore, and Mulkay have pointed out, ‘technologies are often made
available through texts, and the meaning given to a technology through
such texts can vary from context to context (and/or audience to audi-
ence) [. . .] It is only by close attention to the different discursive contexts
in which these definitions are offered and an examination of the rhetoric
of technology that we can begin to understand the full richness of its
multifaceted and interpretative nature’ (Pinch, Ashmore, & Mulkay,
1992, p. 242). For the same technology, a multiplicity of possible dis-
courses exists, and the formulation of these discourses is not the exclu-
sive right of inventors or advocates. A new technology can be inserted
into a different discursive realm that may develop different interpret-
ations of its nature and use. Discourses are always in competition,
looking for a closure that should make a certain meaning prevalent and
others hardly possible. This is the reason why some actors can interpret
the same technology, the Internet for example, as liberating, while others
interpret it as a threat. It is by investigating different discursive realms
that these competing readings can be assessed.
A second, more defining, aspect of the discursive nature of technolo-
gies rests on the fact that they are not simply material elements, as a stone
or a tree are, that need to be invested with discourses to acquire meaning.
Because of their very nature as products of human activity, technologies
also embed discourses that are enabling and constraining at the same
time. Langdon Winner (1980) and numerous authors in the Actor Net-
work Theory (ANT) tradition (see, for example, Latour, 1992, 2005;
Law & Hassard, 1999) have illustrated how certain prescriptions can be
inserted into objects and work as well, if not better, than norms or
warnings. Similarly, with the notion of technopolitics Gabrielle Hecht
emphasized how technologies could represent a particular way to per-
form politics, allowing actors to reach goals that would not be attainable
otherwise. As she explained:

I use the term [technopolitics] to refer to the strategic practice of designing or

using technology to constitute, embody, or enact political goals. Here I define
18 Technopolitics, Communication Technologies, and Development

technology broadly to include artifacts as well as nonphysical, systematic means

of making or doing things. [. . .] Calling these hybrids “politically constructed
technologies” is correct; however, it is not sufficient, because technologists
intended them as tools in political negotiations. At the same time, these
technologies are not, in and of themselves, technopolitics. Rather, the practice
of using them in political processes and/or toward political aims constitutes
technopolitics. Why not just call that practice “politics”? The answer lies in the
material reality of the technologies. These technologies cannot be reduced to
politics. The effectiveness of technologies as objects designed to accomplish
real material purposes matters – among many other reasons – because the
material effectiveness of technologies can affect their political effectiveness,
(Hecht, 2001, pp. 256–257)

In the study of technopolitical regimes, and especially of regimes

emerging from the diffusion of technologies of global relevance and scale,
this duality of technology is taken into account by framing technologies
and discourses as two complementary and co-present elements through
which societies may change and may aim at changing other societies.
In the following chapters discourses will thus be considered both as
concepts competing for hegemony, in the Gramscian sense of an intern-
alized set of assumptions which progressively define the common sense
(De Waal, 2012; Gramsci, 1975; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Mkandawire,
2001), and as they interact and become embedded into technological
artefacts.

Networks of Actors
Technologies and discourses do not emerge and spread by themselves
but need actors to create, assert, and spread them. Discourses may
resonate with one another to varying degrees, or clash and antagonize
one another. Likewise, technologies may encounter acceptance or resist-
ance. The particular fit a technology finds in a country is not simply
‘there’ as the result of a static combination between given technologies
and given discourses. It has to be constructed by international or local
actors or, more often, by both.
The growing scholarship on networks in comparative politics and in
international relations has largely interpreted networks as coalitions of
actors coming together, in more or less organized ways, to support a
specific issue or set of issues. Martha Finnemore’s (1996) research on
science bureaucracies and Peter Haas’ (1992) analysis of epistemic com-
munities both illustrate how discourses are supported by groups or insti-
tutions – ‘active teachers’ in Finnemore’s terminology – advocating their
selection. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s (1998) seminal work on
 Networks of Actors 19

transnational advocacy networks has shed light on the conditions under

which coalitions of civil society organizations succeed in placing new
issues on national and international agendas.
At the domestic level, numerous studies have explored which factors
favour or limit the diffusion of new ideas, policies, and norms (Checkel,
1997, 2001; Green, 2002; Kahler, 2009; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Klotz,
2002; Risse-Kappen, 1994). These works stress how the actual forms
that new discourses take on at the local level depend on the relationships
and power distribution among competing actors, as well as on the
historical trajectory and political culture of a nation. To become effect-
ive, discourses (though the same argument can be extended to technolo-
gies) need to find agents that endorse them and have the power to enact
them on the ground. Or, following a different path, an actor may choose
to ride over a discourse (or a technology) that is gaining national or
international attention to increase its visibility or power over other actors.
In most cases it is not simply one actor – a ministry, a company, or an
NGO – that has the power or capacity to perform this task alone, and
winning coalitions need to be formed.
In the case of ICTs this process is further complicated by their material
component. The fit needs to be found both at the discursive and at the
material level. It can be an impossibility to unlock and reshape a particu-
lar technology considered to be both useful and harmful by an authori-
tarian government that prevents its acceptance, until the development of
a greater capacity to control it opens the door to its reception. In a
country like China, for example, the increase in the number of Internet
users has coincided with an increase in the capacity of the central gov-
ernment to prevent specific uses while favouring others (Yang, 2013;
Zhao, 2008). It can be argued that in the absence of such a technical
capacity, a similar diffusion might not have happened, or perhaps not at
the same pace.
Coalitions of actors, similar to assemblages of technological artefacts,
are not all the same or equal, and the modes in which they are designed
(or lack a conscious design and administration) along with how the nodes
that compose them relate to one another, are indicative of different types
of groupings. Milton Mueller (2010) has explored this difference in ways
that are particularly useful for the analysis of technopolitical regimes. In
his study on the global politics of the Internet, he distinguished between
network organizations, which are ‘bounded and consciously arranged’
and whose ‘actors [. . .] design the relationship among a bounded set of
individuals or organizations to pursue a common objective’; and associa-
tive clusters, ‘de facto clusters’ that have ‘no single point of adminis-
tration [and] may have different and even conflicting objectives but may
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 12. EXTENSION OF KRONECKER'S
THEOREM ON ABELIAN FIELDS TO
ANY ALGEBRAIC REALM OF
RATIONALITY.
The theorem that every abelian number field arises from the
realm of rational numbers by the composition of fields of roots of
unity is due to Kronecker. This fundamental theorem in the theory of
integral equations contains two statements, namely:
First. It answers the question as to the number and existence of
those equations which have a given degree, a given abelian group
and a given discriminant with respect to the realm of rational
numbers.
Second. It states that the roots of such equations form a realm
of algebraic numbers which coincides with the realm obtained by
assigning to the argument in the exponential function all
rational numerical values in succession.
The first statement is concerned with the question of the
determination of certain algebraic numbers by their groups and their
branching. This question corresponds, therefore, to the known
problem of the determination of algebraic functions corresponding to
given Riemann surfaces. The second statement furnishes the
required numbers by transcendental means, namely, by the
exponential function .
Since the realm of the imaginary quadratic number fields is the
simplest after the realm of rational numbers, the problem arises, to
extend Kronecker's theorem to this case. Kronecker himself has
made the assertion that the abelian equations in the realm of a
quadratic field are given by the equations of transformation of elliptic
functions with singular moduli, so that the elliptic function assumes
here the same rôle as the exponential function in the former case.
The proof of Kronecker's conjecture has not yet been furnished; but I
believe that it must be obtainable without very great difficulty on the
basis of the theory of complex multiplication developed by H.
Weber[26] with the help of the purely arithmetical theorems on class
fields which I have established.
Finally, the extension of Kronecker's theorem to the case that, in
place of the realm of rational numbers or of the imaginary quadratic
field, any algebraic field whatever is laid down as realm of rationality,
seems to me of the greatest importance. I regard this problem as
one of the most profound and far-reaching in the theory of numbers
and of functions.
The problem is found to be accessible from many standpoints. I
regard as the most important key to the arithmetical part of this
problem the general law of reciprocity for residues of th powers
within any given number field.
As to the function-theoretical part of the problem, the
investigator in this attractive region will be guided by the remarkable
analogies which are noticeable between the theory of algebraic
functions of one variable and the theory of algebraic numbers.
Hensel[27] has proposed and investigated the analogue in the theory
of algebraic numbers to the development in power series of an
algebraic function; and Landsberg[28] has treated the analogue of
the Riemann-Roch theorem. The analogy between the deficiency of
a Riemann surface and that of the class number of a field of
numbers is also evident. Consider a Riemann surface of deficiency
(to touch on the simplest case only) and on the other hand a
number field of class . To the proof of the existence of an
integral everywhere finite on the Riemann surface, corresponds the
proof of the existence of an integer in the number field such that
the number represents a quadratic field, relatively unbranched
with respect to the fundamental field. In the theory of algebraic
functions, the method of boundary values (Randwerthaufgabe)
serves, as is well known, for the proof of Riemann's existence
theorem. In the theory of number fields also, the proof of the
existence of just this number offers the greatest difficulty. This
proof succeeds with indispensable assistance from the theorem that
in the number field there are always prime ideals corresponding to
given residual properties. This latter fact is therefore the analogue in
number theory to the problem of boundary values.
The equation of Abel's theorem in the theory of algebraic
functions expresses, as is well known, the necessary and sufficient
condition that the points in question on the Riemann surface are the
zero points of an algebraic function belonging to the surface. The
exact analogue of Abel's theorem, in the theory of the number field
of class , is the equation of the law of quadratic reciprocity[29]

which declares that the ideal is then and only then a principal ideal
of the number field when the quadratic residue of the number with
respect to the ideal is positive.
It will be seen that in the problem just sketched the three
fundamental branches of mathematics, number theory, algebra and
function theory, come into closest touch with one another, and I am
certain that the theory of analytical functions of several variables in
particular would be notably enriched if one should succeed in finding
and discussing those functions which play the part for any algebraic
number field corresponding to that of the exponential function in the
field of rational numbers and of the elliptic modular functions in the
imaginary quadratic number field.
Passing to algebra, I shall mention a problem from the theory of
equations and one to which the theory of algebraic invariants has led
me.
[26] Elliptische Funktionen und algebraische Zahlen.
Braunschweig, 1891.
[27] Jahresber. d. Deutschen Math-Vereinigung, vol. 6, and an
article soon to appear in the Math. Annalen [Vol. 55, p. 301]:
"Ueber die Entwickelung der algebraischen Zahlen in
Potenzreihen."
[28] Math. Annalen vol. 50 (1898).
[29] Cf. Hilbert, "Ueber die Theorie der relativ-Abelschen
Zahlkörper," Gött. Nachrichten, 1898.
 13. IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE
SOLUTION OF THE GENERAL
EQUATION OF THE 7TH DEGREE BY
MEANS OF FUNCTIONS OF ONLY
TWO ARGUMENTS.
Nomography[30] deals with the problem: to solve equations by
means of drawings of families of curves depending on an arbitrary
parameter. It is seen at once that every root of an equation whose
coefficients depend upon only two parameters, that is, every function
of two independent variables, can be represented in manifold ways
according to the principle lying at the foundation of nomography.
Further, a large class of functions of three or more variables can
evidently be represented by this principle alone without the use of
variable elements, namely all those which can be generated by
forming first a function of two arguments, then equating each of
these arguments to a function of two arguments, next replacing each
of those arguments in their turn by a function of two arguments, and
so on, regarding as admissible any finite number of insertions of
functions of two arguments. So, for example, every rational function
of any number of arguments belongs to this class of functions
constructed by nomographic tables; for it can be generated by the
processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and
each of these processes produces a function of only two arguments.
One sees easily that the roots of all equations which are solvable by
radicals in the natural realm of rationality belong to this class of
functions; for here the extraction of roots is adjoined to the four
arithmetical operations and this, indeed, presents a function of one
argument only. Likewise the general equations of the th and th
degrees are solvable by suitable nomographic tables; for, by means
of Tschirnhausen transformations, which require only extraction of
roots, they can be reduced to a form where the coefficients depend
upon two parameters only.
Now it is probable that the root of the equation of the seventh
degree is a function of its coefficients which does not belong to this
class of functions capable of nomographic construction, i. e., that it
cannot be constructed by a finite number of insertions of functions of
two arguments. In order to prove this, the proof would be necessary
that the equation of the seventh degree
is not solvable with the help of any
continuous functions of only two arguments. I may be allowed to add
that I have satisfied myself by a rigorous process that there exist
analytical functions of three arguments which cannot be
obtained by a finite chain of functions of only two arguments.
By employing auxiliary movable elements, nomography
succeeds in constructing functions of more than two arguments, as
d'Ocagne has recently proved in the case of the equation of the th
degree.[31]
[30] d'Ocagne, Traité de Nomographie, Paris, 1899.
[31] "Sur la resolution nomographiqne de l'équation du septième
degré." Comptes rendus, Paris, 1900.
 14. PROOF OF THE FINITENESS OF
CERTAIN COMPLETE SYSTEMS OF
FUNCTIONS.
In the theory of algebraic invariants, questions as to the
finiteness of complete systems of forms deserve, as it seems to me,
particular interest. L. Maurer[32] has lately succeeded in extending
the theorems on finiteness in invariant theory proved by P. Gordan
and myself, to the case where, instead of the general projective
group, any subgroup is chosen as the basis for the definition of
invariants.
An important step in this direction had been taken already by A.
Hurwitz,[33] who, by an ingenious process, succeeded in effecting
the proof, in its entire generality, of the finiteness of the system of
orthogonal invariants of an arbitrary ground form.
The study of the question as to the finiteness of invariants has
led me to a simple problem which includes that question as a
particular case and whose solution probably requires a decidedly
more minutely detailed study of the theory of elimination and of
Kronecker's algebraic modular systems than has yet been made.
Let a number of integral rational functions
of the variables be given,
Every rational integral combination of must evidently
always become, after substitution of the above expressions, a
rational integral function of . Nevertheless, there may
well be rational fractional functions of which, by the
operation of the substitution , become integral functions in
. Every such rational function of , which
becomes integral in after the application of the
substitution , I propose to call a relatively integral function of
. Every integral function of is evidently
also relatively integral; further the sum, difference and product of
relative integral functions are themselves relatively integral.
The resulting problem is now to decide whether it is always
possible to find a finite system of relatively integral function
by which every other relatively integral function of
may be expressed rationally and integrally.
We can formulate the problem still more simply if we introduce
the idea of a finite field of integrality. By a finite field of integrality I
mean a system of functions from which a finite number of functions
can be chosen, in terms of which all other functions of the system
are rationally and integrally expressible. Our problem amounts, then,
to this: to show that all relatively integral functions of any given
domain of rationality always constitute a finite field of integrality.
It naturally occurs to us also to refine the problem by restrictions
drawn from number theory, by assuming the coefficients of the given
functions to be integers and including among the
relatively integral functions of only such rational
functions of these arguments as become, by the application of the
substitutions , rational integral functions of with
rational integral coefficients.
The following is a simple particular case of this refined problem:
Let integral rational functions of one variable with
integral rational coefficients, and a prime number be given.
Consider the system of those integral rational functions of which
can be expressed in the form
where is a rational integral function of the arguments
and is any power of the prime number . Earlier
investigations of mine[34] show immediately that all such expressions
for a fixed exponent form a finite domain of integrality. But the
question here is whether the same is true for all exponents , i. e.,
whether a finite number of such expressions can be chosen by
means of which for every exponent every other expression of that
form is integrally and rationally expressible.

From the boundary region between algebra and geometry, I will

mention two problems. The one concerns enumerative geometry and
the other the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces.
[32] Cf. Sitzungsber. d. K. Acad. d. Wiss. zu München, 1890, and
an article about to appear in the Math. Annalen.
[33] "Ueber die Erzeugung der Invarianten durch Integration,"
Nachrichten d. K. Geseltschaft d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, 1897.
[34] Math. Annalen, vol. 36 (1890), p. 485.
 15. RIGOROUS FOUNDATION OF
SCHUBERT'S ENUMERATIVE
CALCULUS.
The problem consists in this: To establish rigorously and with an
exact determination of the limits of their validity those geometrical
numbers which Schubert[35] especially has determined on the basis
of the so-called principle of special position, or conservation of
number, by means of the enumerative calculus developed by him.
Although the algebra of to-day guarantees, in principle, the
possibility of carrying out the processes of elimination, yet for the
proof of the theorems of enumerative geometry decidedly more is
requisite, namely, the actual carrying out of the process of
elimination in the case of equations of special form in such a way
that the degree of the final equations and the multiplicity of their
solutions may be foreseen.
[35] Kalkül der abzählenden Geometrie, Leipzig, 1879.
 16. PROBLEM OF THE TOPOLOGY OF
ALGEBRAIC CURVES AND SURFACES.
The maximum number of closed and separate branches which a
plane algebraic curve of the th order can have has been determined by
Harnack.[36] There arises the further question as to the relative position of
the branches in the plane. As to curves of the th order, I have satisfied
myself—by a complicated process, it is true—that of the eleven blanches
which they can have according to Harnack, by no means all can lie
external to one another, but that one branch must exist in whose interior
one branch and in whose exterior nine branches lie, or inversely. A
thorough investigation of the relative position of the separate branches
when their number is the maximum seems to me to be of very great
interest, and not less so the corresponding investigation as to the number,
form, and position of the sheets of an algebraic surface in space. Till now,
indeed, it is not even known what is the maximum number of sheets which
a surface of the th order in three dimensional space can really have.[37]
In connection with this purely algebraic problem, I wish to bring
forward a question which, it seems to me, may be attacked by the same
method of continuous variation of coefficients, and whose answer is of
corresponding value for the topology of families of curves defined by
differential equations. This is the question as to the maximum number and
position of Poincaré's boundary cycles (cycles limites) for a differential
equation of the first order and degree of the form

where and are rational integral functions of the th degree in and

. Written homogeneously, this is
where , and are rational integral homogeneous functions of the th
degree in , and the latter are to be determined as functions of the
parameter .
[36] Math. Annalen, vol. 10.
[37] Cf. Rohn. "Flächen vierter Ordnung," Preisschriften der Fürstlich
Jablonowskischen Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1886.
 17. EXPRESSION OF DEFINITE
FORMS BY SQUARES.
A rational integral function or form in any number of variables
with real coefficients such that it becomes negative for no real values
of these variables, is said to be definite. The system of all definite
forms is invariant with respect to the operations of addition and
multiplication, but the quotient of two definite forms—in case it
should be an integral function of the variables—is also a definite
form. The square of any form is evidently always a definite form. But
since, as I have shown,[38] not every definite form can be
compounded by addition from squares of forms, the question arises
—which I have answered affirmatively for ternary forms[39]—whether
every definite form may not be expressed as a quotient of sums of
squares of forms. At the same time it is desirable, for certain
questions as to the possibility of certain geometrical constructions, to
know whether the coefficients of the forms to be used in the
expression may always be taken from the realm of rationality given
by the coefficients of the form represented.[40]
I mention one more geometrical problem:
[38] Math. Annalen, vol. 32.
[39] Acta Mathematica, vol. 17.
[40] Cf. Hilbert: Grunglagen der Geometrie, Leipzig, 1899, Chap.
7 and in particular § 38.
 18. BUILDING UP OF SPACE FROM
CONGRUENT POLYHEDRA.
If we enquire for those groups of motions in the plane for which
a fundamental region exists, we obtain various answers, according
as the plane considered is Riemann's (elliptic), Euclid's, or
Lobachevsky's (hyperbolic). In the case of the elliptic plane there is a
finite number of essentially different kinds of fundamental regions,
and a finite number of congruent regions suffices for a complete
covering of the whole plane; the group consists indeed of a finite
number of motions only. In the case of the hyperbolic plane there is
an infinite number of essentially different kinds of fundamental
regions, namely, the well-known Poincaré polygons. For the
complete covering of the plane an infinite number of congruent
regions is necessary. The case of Euclid's plane stands between
these; for in this case there is only a finite number of essentially
different kinds of groups of motions with fundamental regions, but for
a complete covering of the whole plane an infinite number of
congruent regions is necessary.
Exactly the corresponding facts are found in space of three
dimensions. The fact of the finiteness of the groups of motions in
elliptic space is an immediate consequence of a fundamental
theorem of C. Jordan,[41] whereby the number of essentially different
kinds of finite groups of linear substitutions in variables does not
surpass a certain finite limit dependent upon . The groups of
motions with fundamental regions in hyperbolic space have been
investigated by Fricke and Klein in the lectures on the theory of
automorphic functions,[42] and finally Fedorov,[43] Schoenflies[44]
and lately Rohn[45] have given the proof that there are, in euclidean
space, only a finite number of essentially different kinds of groups of
motions with a fundamental region. Now, while the results and
methods of proof applicable to elliptic and hyperbolic space hold
directly for -dimensional space also, the generalization of the
theorem for euclidean space seems to offer decided difficulties. The
investigation of the following question is therefore desirable: Is there
in -dimensional euclidean space also only a finite number of
essentially different kinds of groups of motions with a fundamental
region?
A fundamental region of each group of motions, together with
the congruent regions arising from the group, evidently fills up space
completely. The question arises: Whether polyhedra also exist which
do not appear as fundamental regions of groups of motions, by
means of which nevertheless by a suitable juxtaposition of congruent
copies a complete filling up of all space is possible. I point out the
following question, related to the preceding one, and important to
number theory and perhaps sometimes useful to physics and
chemistry: How can one arrange most densely in space an infinite
number of equal solids of given form, e. g., spheres with given radii
or regular tetrahedra with given edges (or in prescribed position),
that is, how can one so fit them together that the ratio of the filled to
the unfilled space may be as great as possible?

If we look over the development of the theory of functions in the

last century, we notice above all the fundamental importance of that
class of functions which we now designate as analytic functions—a
class of functions which will probably stand permanently in the
center of mathematical interest.
There are many different standpoints from which we might
choose, out of the totality of all conceivable functions, extensive
classes worthy of a particularly thorough investigation. Consider, for
example, the class of functions characterized by ordinary or partial
algebraic differential equations. It should be observed that this class
does not contain the functions that arise in number theory and
whose investigation is of the greatest importance. For example, the
before-mentioned function satisfies no algebraic differential
equation, as is easily seen with the help of the well-known relation
between and , if one refers to the theorem proved by
Holder,[46] that the function satisfies no algebraic differential
equation. Again, the function of the two variables and defined by
the infinite series

which stands in close relation with the function , probably

satisfies no algebraic partial differential equation. In the investigation
of this question the functional equation

will have to be used.

If, on the other hand, we are lead by arithmetical or geometrical
reasons to consider the class of all those functions which are
continuous and indefinitely differentiable, we should be obliged in its
investigation to dispense with that pliant instrument, the power
series, and with the circumstance that the function is fully determined
by the assignment of values in any region, however small. While,
therefore, the former limitation of the field of functions was too
narrow, the latter seems to me too wide.
The idea of the analytic function on the other hand includes the
whole wealth of functions most important to science, whether they
have their origin in number theory, in the theory of differential
equations or of algebraic functional equations, whether they arise in
geometry or in mathematical physics; and, therefore, in the entire
realm of functions, the analytic function justly holds undisputed
supremacy.
[41] Crelle's Journal, vol. 84 (1878), and Atti d. Reale Acad. di
Napoli, 1880.
[42] Leipzig, 1897. Cf. especially Abschnitt I, Chaplets 2 and 3.
[43] Symmetrie der regelmässigen Systeme von Figuren, 1890.
[44] Krystallsysteme und Krystallstruktur, Leipzig, 1891.
[45] Math. Annalen, vol. 53.
[46] Math. Annalen, vol. 28.
 19. ARE THE SOLUTIONS OF
REGULAR PROBLEMS IN THE
CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS ALWAYS
NECESSARILY ANALYTIC?
One of the most remarkable facts in the elements of the theory
of analytic functions appears to me to be this: That there exist partial
differential equations whose integrals are all of necessity analytic
functions of the independent variables, that is, in short, equations
susceptible of none but analytic solutions. The best known partial
differential equations of this kind are the potential equation

and certain linear differential equations investigated by Picard;[47]

also the equation

the partial differential equation of minimal surfaces, and others. Most

of these partial differential equations have the common characteristic
of being the lagrangian differential equations of certain problems of
variation, viz., of such problems of variation
as satisfy, for all values of the arguments which fall within the range
of discussion, the inequality

itself being an analytic function. We shall call this sort of problem

a regular variation problem. It is chiefly the regular variation
problems that play a rôle in geometry, in mechanics, and in
mathematical physics; and the question naturally arises, whether all
solutions of regular variation problems must necessarily be analytic
functions. In other words, does every lagrangian partial differential
equation of a regular variation problem have the property of
admitting analytic integrals exclusively? And is this the case even
when the function is constrained to assume, as, e. g., in Dirichlet's
problem on the potential function, boundary values which are
continuous, but not analytic?
I may add that there exist surfaces of constant negative
gaussian curvature which are representable by functions that are
continuous and possess indeed all the derivatives, and yet are not
analytic; while on the other hand it is probable that every surface
whose gaussian curvature is constant and positive is necessarily an
analytic surface. And we know that the surfaces of positive constant
curvature are most closely related to this regular variation problem:
To pass through a closed curve in space a surface of minimal area
which shall inclose, in connection with a fixed surface through the
same closed curve, a volume of given magnitude.
[47] Jour. de l'Ecole Polytech., 1890.
 20. THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF
BOUNDARY VALVES.
An important problem closely connected with the foregoing is
the question concerning the existence of solutions of partial
differential equations when the values on the boundary of the region
are prescribed. This problem is solved in the main by the keen
methods of H. A. Schwarz, C. Neumann, and Poincaré for the
differential equation of the potential. These methods, however, seem
to be generally not capable of direct extension to the case where
along the boundary there are prescribed either the differential
coefficients or any relations between these and the values of the
function. Nor can they be extended immediately to the case where
the inquiry is not for potential surfaces but, say, for surfaces of least
area, or surfaces of constant positive gaussian curvature, which are
to pass through a prescribed twisted curve or to stretch over a given
ring surface. It is my conviction that it will be possible to prove these
existence theorems by means of a general principle whose nature is
indicated by Dirichlet's principle. This general principle will then
perhaps enable us to approach the question: Has not every regular
variation problem a solution, provided certain assumptions regarding
the given boundary conditions are satisfied (say that the functions
concerned in these boundary conditions are continuous and have in
sections one or more derivatives), and provided also if need be that
the notion of a solution shall be suitably extended?[48]
[48] Cf. my lecture on Dirichlet's principle in the Jahresber. d.
Deutschen Math.-Vereinigung, vol. 8 (1900), p. 184.