This workshop will assess questions surrounding the discrepancy in reality and expectation when it comes to witnessing the role new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) played in supporting political change in Sub-Saharan Africa at the beginning of 2011. What are the reasons for this apparent absence of impact? How much of the lack of technologically mediated mobilisations for greater rights and political freedoms depends simply on the limited diffusion of ICTs such as the Internet? The workshop will address these questions by providing a platform for scholars studying the role of ICTs in political transformations to engage with the arguments put forward by researchers investigating governance processes in Africa. It will focus not only on the newest technologies, but explore the unique ways in which new and old means of communication are being and could be combined in Sub-Saharan Africa to enable citizens to express voice and affect political processes. The overarching aim is to explore whether, as has been the case for applications such as mobile banking, the most significant uses of ICTs for participatory politics in Africa may emerge from a unique combination of global influences and local needs, rather than from the application of tools and uses that have been proved successful in external contexts. The schedule is the following:
Panel 1: ICTs and political change in Africa. How to bridge the communication and governance divide?
Chair: Sharath Srinivasan (CGHR, University of Cambridge)
Richard Crook (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex)
Rethinking governance for development in Africa: building on what works
Winston Mano (University of Westminster)
Not Yet Uhuru: The growing Janus Face of New Media and ICTs in Africa
Panel 2: Mobile phones and citizens’ voices in the African airwaves. How is interactive radio affecting governance in Africa?
Chair: Harri Englund (University of Cambridge)
Iginio Gagliardone (CGHR, University of Cambridge): Voice, texts and claims. Understanding new forms of interactions among citizens, radio journalists and governance actors in Kenya
Alastair Fraser (CGHR, University of Cambridge): Interactive radio at Breeze FM, Chipata, Zambia: transforming or reinforcing authoritarian culture?
Florence Brisset-Foucault (CGHR, University of Cambridge): How ICTs and talk radio influence the debates on citizenship and the modalities of political participation in Uganda: preliminary reflections
Panel 3: ICTs and electoral politics in Africa
Chair: Anne Alexander (CRASSH, University of Cambridge)
Teke Ngomba (University of Aarhus): ‘Politics here is man-to-man’: Understanding political parties’ tepid embrace of ICTs in Cameroon
Gianluca Iazzolino (University of Edinburgh): Texting in troubled times. Civil society using mobile telephony during 2007-8 political violence in Kibera, Kenya
Panel 4: Investigating ICTs and political change: Tools and methods
Chair: Daniel Hammett (University of Sheffield)
Alem Hailu and Helen Bond (Howard University): Social media and political change in Africa
Nicole Stremlau (University of Oxford) and Emrys Schoemaker (LSE): Diagnosing communication ecologies