Decolonizing Digital Technology in Africa: A Political Thought

Abstract

Zenon Ndayisenga

This paper critically examines how almost everybody in the world cannot survive without using digital technology tools in the contemporary days. The use of digital technology tools has become a daily life requirement in the world. It is in such a perspective that these digital technology tools are therefore assessed as the pre-requisite tools that are needed for almost everybody nowadays. However, in the African context and taking Africa as the unity of analysis, the same digital technology tools are criticized for having both negative and positive impacts on African society. Mostly judged as good for adults, some researchers observe that digital technology tools are very dangerous to young children if not supervised by adults for what they have to use them for. From an African political perspective, these tools are not only dangerous but also colonial apparatuses based on the fact that these tools are colonially designed—a scandal for African society. Politically, any fabricated technological device is made for a particular objective. This questions multiple missions of technological digital tools that are exported to Africa—considered as a laboratory. Decolonizing digital technology in Africa therefore attracts an African political thought as an emergent need to challenge such a dominium digito-colonial complex situation.

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