Desirable Futures and digital technologies in Africa

About

In current scholarly and media discourses on digital technologies in Africa, there seems to be what Kanyinsola Obayan, researcher of Nigerian computer history, calls a  “hypervisibility of innovation from Africa and the Global South”. This hypervisibility is on the one hand, a chance for new approaches like the indigenisation of digital innovations and the decolonisation of tech tools, on the other hand, it seems to reproduce old promises of technology as a one-size-fits-all solution to development issues, inequalities and environment. This form of technosolutionism is heavily invested in by African public and private actors, technologies being deemed as solutions to the continent’s challenges : tackling social inequalities, climate change, youth unemployment, state-building or the advent of the old “Africa Rising” narrative.
Taking a critical perspective, this seminar will ask about desirable futures for digital technologies as imagined and practised by and for Africans. By bringing together scholars in a monthly series of paper presentations and discussions on the current landscape of digital technologies and their impact in and on Africa, the seminar aims to lead to a critical reflection on current tech developments and possible futures on the continent. 

The seminar will bring together scholars working on topics ranging from African entrepreneurship and tech innovations, to technologies in state-building, digital modernity and new forms of subjectivisation, technologies and education and AI from African perspectives. It intends to provide a space of exchange especially for young and emerging scholars to collectively reflect on a critical approach towards digital technologies in Africa, possible digital futures, and a decolonisation of digital technologies.

Program

Session 1 : Introduction to the Seminar  - (29th January 2026)

• Michaël Bourdon (CERI - Sciences Po/CNRS)
• Anna K. Osterlow (CHSP - Sciences Po)
   

Session 2 - AI from an African perspective: Panafricanism, statemaking and
digital technologies (5th February 2026)

• Arthur Gwagwa (Utrecht University): "The epistemic marginalisation of Sub-Saharan
  Africa in AI governance"
• Cecilia Passanti (Université Paris-Cité): "Making Politics though Infrastructures:
  Computer Scientists as Transnational Actors of African Decolonisations"

Session 3 - African innovation spaces and Future Imaginaries (March 5th 2026)

•  Janine Patricia Santos (KU Leuven): Making cities and futures. Maker and
  hackerspaces in four African cities (Lomé, Accra, Cape Town and Nairobi).
   

Session 4 - Imagining modernist cities in Africa through technology (April 2nd
2026)

• Junnan Mu (Harvard University): The making and unmaking of the modernist city in
  Africa. City branding and digital technology in Kenya
• Fatoumata Diallo (Sciences Po)

Session 5 - Digital technologies and State practices (May 7th 2026) 

• Corentin Cohen (University of Oxford)
• Caroline King (Wits University) 

Session 6 - Digital entrepreneurship and new development heroes ? (June 2nd
2026)

• Tessa Pijnaker (Utrecht University)
• Michaël Bourdon (CERI - Sciences Po/CNRS)