Fall 2020
Reginold Royston
3 credits
Graduate students only
Development, a policy word used by radical reformers and economists alike, is fraught with contradictions. What role does technology play in accounting for it? Since the inception of the World Bank, Africa’s nations have languished at the bottom ranks of its human and economic metrics. Sixty years into the independence era, who is to blame? More importantly, what can be done? How can Africa’s successes with COVID19 serve as a model? This course attempts to assess approaches to improved African livelihoods through the concept of “human development” as it used in African Studies, international aid policy, anthropological, and practitioner literature. Since the early 2000s, the acronym ICT4D has fascinated development scholars and NGO-workers, with the premise that the broad adoption of information and communication technologies(ICT) could allow Africa to “leapfrog” past the Industrial Era into the Age of Techne. China has also emerged as counter-veiling force to Europe in Africa’s development politics. But whether through gold, socialism, Christianity, or coltan, Africa has struggled to formulate a development agenda on its own terms. In this graduate seminar, participants will take up the task of defining and assessing notions of “development” through a range of academic literature, creative work, and practitioner discourse. Coursework involves classroom presentations, development of annotated bibliographies, and a final publication-ready paper.
Selected Course Readings include:
Walter Rodney – How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Achille Mbembe – Necropolitics
Osseo-Asare — Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa After Independence
Nnendi Okrafor — Lagoon
Euince Gaguma Ball — Founding Women: African’s Tech Entrepreneurs
Iginio Gagaliardone — China, Africa and the Future of the Internet
Issa Shivji — Where is Uhuru?: Reflections on the Struggle for Democracy in Africa
