What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780262342339
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Technology & Engineering

In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of "technology transfer" from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. "Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere," observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume's editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable.

The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of "fixing"; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Knowledge Unlatched.

Contributors
Geri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash, Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?
• 1 The Place of Science and Technology in Our Lives: Making Sense of Possibilities
• 2 The Language of Science, Technology, and Innovation: A Chimurenga Way of Seeing from Dzimbahwe
• 3 The Metalworker, the Potter, and the Pre-European African “Laboratory”
• 4 Plants of Bondage, Limbo Plants, and Liberation Flora: Diasporic Reflections for STS in Africa and Africa in STS
• 5 Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa
• 6 On the Politics of Generative Justice: African Traditions and Maker Communities
• 7 Making Mobiles African
• 8 Innovation for Development: Africa
• 9 Science, Technology, and Innovation in Africa: Conceptualizations, Relevance, and Policy Directions
• References
• Contributors
• Index