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The Politics of Technology in Africa
Iginio Gagliardone
University of the Witwatersrand / University of Oxford
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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
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
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.
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
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
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
4
See, for example, The Ethiopian Herald, ‘Editorial’, 6 June 1991, p. 7.
8 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.
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)
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
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
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
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
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.