By Alev Coban<\/strong><\/p>\n
Do we have our own inherent culture that informs how we go about building stuff, <\/em>
\nor are we just dancing to the tune of whoever wants to listen?!<\/em><\/p>\n(tech expert and researcher, interview, 2015)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>All over the world, sites for technological innovation gain international awareness \u2013 be it Shenzhen in China, Cape Town in South Africa or Nairobi in Kenya. Accompanied by this awareness is the renaming and branding of those new(ly discovered)[1]<\/a> places as emerging Silicon Valleys: Shenzhen as the \u201cSilicon Valley for Hardware\u201d, Cape Town as \u201cSilicon Cape\u201d and Nairobi as \u201cSilicon Savannah\u201d. The more success stories and products are covered by the media, the more people from \u2018long\u2019-established places of tech production, like Silicon Valley or Europe, are visiting places that have not yet been in the spotlight of technological innovation. When Mark Zuckerberg visited Nairobi\u2019s tech scene in August 2016 to learn about technology that uses mobile money, it became clear that Nairobi\u2019s reputation as a place of tech innovation had spread to the top level of global tech gurus.<\/p>\n
A relatively new phenomenon in Nairobi is the emergence of a \u2018maker scene\u2019, which focuses on the development of \u2018stuff\u2019 and hardware rather than the well-funded software development community. Engine[2]<\/a>, the first makerspace in Nairobi, opened its doors in December 2015 with the financial support of private investors and charity organizations. It was established as a solution to challenges faced by hardware companies, engineers and other people who aim to develop new (hardware) technology in Nairobi. Those challenges include the high taxes on imported resources, such as basic soldering wire, little 3-5mm screws for electric circuits or a huge CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) machine, that often render imported goods too expensive to buy (Mungai, 2015). Thus, many engineers in Kenya lack access to resources and machines to prototype cheaply and quickly. Sending a digital model of a prototype to specific companies in the US, getting it built there and then shipping the finished prototype back to Nairobi is one strategy for prototyping that is cheaper and quicker than in Nairobi. Nevertheless, it is a more time- and money-consuming process for Kenyans than it is for engineers in the US or UK. Not only are individuals challenged as they attempt to gain access to the resources and machines used for building and prototyping, but, in addition, small Kenyan start-ups often do not get deals with global hardware suppliers. To address those needs, Engine offers its members access to high-quality machines. With those offers, Engine consciously separates itself from the amateurish \u2018Do-It-Yourself\u2019 stance of many global makerspaces by particularly looking for professionals who have an idea that can be marketed in Kenya (head of operations at Engine, interview, 2015). Its overall vision is to support the development of technologies \u201cMade in Africa, for Africa\u201d and an overall \u201cfourth industrial revolution\u201d in Kenya (Birkelo, 2017; Gachigi, 2017).<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the \u2018revolutionary\u2019 vibe of tech production in Nairobi has its limits when confronted with the challenge of raising funds and investments for tech projects. A research partner of mine, the former Head of iHub[3]<\/a> Research, problematizes the dependency on the values, imaginations and resulting requirements of funders and investors, and demands that local innovators stop \u201cdancing to the tune of whoever wants to listen\u201d, as the quote at the beginning of this section states. Therefore, this paper argues that tech developers and start-ups in Nairobi have to constantly negotiate between liberating feelings about new work possibilities on the one hand, and on the other, restrictive requirements of international funders and investors who still pursue exoticized imaginations of lives in a generalized \u2018Africa\u2019. I claim that those negotiations lead to the reiterative process between performing deficient environments and building technology that has social impact on broad problems like poverty. For this reason, I refer to Butler\u2019s paper on \u201cPerformative Agency\u201d (2010), where she states: \u201cIt is not only the explicit speech act that exercises performative power. [\u2026 I]t is not simply that a subject performs a speech act; rather, a set of relations and practices are constantly renewed, and agency traverses human and non-human domains\u201d (Ibid., p.150). With this new socio-material stance in her arguments, Butler distances herself from the \u201ccultural constructivist position\u201d that she argued for in Gender Trouble<\/em> (1990) (Ibid., 2010, p.153). Based on that socio-material notion of performativity, I call the performative practices around tech development in Nairobi that materialize and stabilize the norms of social impact a performance <\/em>of poverty<\/em>.<\/p>\n
To illustrate these arguments, the paper proceeds as follows: firstly, I describe the ethnographic data collection on which this paper is based. Secondly, I outline why a makerspace in Nairobi is called a revolutionary act: on the one hand, because it faces the challenges of manufacturers and hardware innovators in Kenya, and on the other hand, because it creates international awareness around technological development in order to counter stereotypes of a passive and needy place in the Global South. Thirdly, the paper shows how the slogan \u201cMade in Africa, for Africa\u201d[4]<\/a> highlights the paradox of the simultaneous critique and reproduction of (post)colonial stereotypes causing \u2018othering\u2019. Fourthly, the paper deals with the postcolonial power asymmetries inherent in receiving money from international funders and investors for technological ideas. The imaginations of those companies and development agencies are described as tech-deterministic, social-impact-driven and charitable, and the strategies of tech people in negotiating those imaginations are shown. Finally, the paper concludes by drawing on Judith Butler\u2019s (2010) theory of performativity to argue that the dominance of social entrepreneurship practices in a postcolonial context implies a reproduction of (post)colonial imaginations and, thus, the performance of poverty.<\/p>\n
Ethnographic Research in a Tech Scene<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The following paper is based on ethnographic research conducted in Nairobi between 2015 and 2017. During those years, I accomplished three research stays, working in total about six months in Nairobi. By collaborating with several (co-)working places, my research focuses on places and practices of innovating and making hardware in Nairobi. Hereby, the research particularly looks at the daily lives of those people who still constitute the minority of the innovation scene in East Africa: manufacturers and engineers of hardware and electronics. During the research stays, I had the chance to participate at iHub Research; work as an intern at Engine, the first makerspace in Kenya and my main research partner; and attend numerous tech events, such as hackathons, competitions, panel discussions, etc.<\/p>\n
Thus, my empirical data consists of \u2018ethnographic research\u2019 insights (Crang and Cook, 2007): I mainly used participant observation to bodily experience the everyday practices of developing hardware at Engine (Carr and Gibson, 2017). Additionally, the research is based on qualitative interviews with actors who were not directly involved in my daily life, such as CEOs of hardware companies, influencers in the tech scene, and political and juridical actors. As an important part of my participatory research and aim to approach some principles of the \u2018Charter of Decolonial Research Ethics\u2019, I organized round-table discussions to discuss preliminary research results with the people I worked with. My exploratory research soon immersed me in sensitive topics such as the stressful working conditions of a hardware entrepreneur, race categories and their discriminatory effects, and personal visions and role models of Nairobi\u2019s tech enthusiasts. Using some of those intimate insights in this paper, I decided to anonymize all research participants, even if some did not mind being named in a publication.<\/p>\n
Conducting repeated research stays during a time frame of three years allowed me to continuously work with several research participants. Thus, I could observe and participate in various institutional changes at Engine: its first construction and the visions around it (2015); its operation and functioning (2016); and its move to a much bigger space as a way of further professionalizing its aims (2017). Throughout those changes, I worked predominantly with the staff and members of Engine and had little access to those people who manage and account for the makerspace. Perhaps an \u2018organizational ethnography\u2019 (Ybema et al., 2009), which allows a researcher to stay for a long and continuous period of time, could have enabled participation in the daily lives of the people with management responsibilities, aiming at the understanding of further rationalities and global connections around makerspaces. Additionally, research that allows for high mobility could trace the numerous entanglements of making practices through a \u2018multi-sited ethnography\u2019 (Marcus, 1995) by following global practices of making and hacking. Global connections through travelling entrepreneurs enmeshed in transnational accelerators, conferences, etc., or other specific sociomaterial techniques that are packed into ideas and \u201cmanagement recipes\u201d (Orlikowski and Scott, 2008, p.464) could be followed to illustrate how those global connections frame the daily practices of makers and other innovative people.<\/p>\n
Again, my research combines multiple experiences, solely within Nairobi and with people and materialities only referring to various global places that also lie \u2018outside\u2019 of Nairobi, be it \u201cSilicon Valley\u201d, \u201cChina\u201d or \u201cKisumu\u201d. Thus, the paper builds on the global discourse about \u2018revolutionary makerspaces\u2019 and offers glimpses into local narratives and practices being resistant, supportive and contradictory, but entangled. When using the term \u2018narrative\u2019, I follow Czarniawska (2004, p.27): \u201cEverything is a narrative or at least can be treated as one. Usually, however, a narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving an account of an event\/action or series of events\/actions, chronologically connected. Indeed, it is easy to say what is not a narrative even if it is a text: a table, a list, a schedule, a typology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making New Technologies in Nairobi: the Revolutionary Practices<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Looking at the discourse on makerspaces, the majority of academic and popular literature praises the advantages of digital fabrication for education (Blikstein, 2013; Benton et al., 2013; Halverson and Sheridan 2014; Martin, 2015; Vossoughi and Bevan, 2014) and the inclusion of grassroots people in technological development through makerspaces (Kera, 2012; Smith et al., 2013). It seems that schools, public libraries or other educational institutions see the practices of making and a specific \u201cmaker mindset\u201d (Martin, 2015, p.37) as tools that are highly inclusive for children and families alike (Benton et al., 2013, p.31; Sivek, 2011, p.12). They do so by enabling children in areas of creativity, problem-solving, collaborative work, experimenting and accepting failures (Blikstein, 2013, p.18; Vossoughi and Bevan, 2014, p.46). Despite education, makerspaces and hackerspaces are seen to spur the democratization of science development through the participation of grassroots people in experimenting with scientific knowledge and technologies (Kera 2012; Lindtner, Hertz and Dourish, 2014, p.4). The possibility of a subsequent increase in \u201cuser control over technologies\u201d shows the appreciation of the political power of makerspaces and hackerspaces and the importance of raising awareness about the developer-technology-user relations (Maxigas, 2014, p.11). In general, the majority of the literature on makerspaces predominantly contains either the hype about innovative spaces that will foster education, or the call to use the political power of making[5]<\/a>.<\/p>\n
(former intern at Engine, interview, 2016)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Countering Eurocentric Narratives on Technological Innovation<\/h3>\n
When looking for literature specifically on makerspaces in the Global South, the results are scarce. Historical accounts on the emergence of makerspaces omit places in Sub-Saharan Africa, as these places often do not have a long history of institutionalized making. Thus, the genealogies of hackerspaces and makerspaces focus on the characterization of makers forming a counterculture or Do-It-Yourself\/repair movement against capitalist structures in post-Fordist environments (Maxigas, 2012; Sivek, 2011).[6]<\/a> Therefore, it seems that the majority of literature around making and innovation reflects the hegemonic story about the relation between the Global South and technology:<\/p>\n
(Edgerton, 2007, p.92)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cMade in Africa, for Africa\u201d \u2013 Two Sides of a Coin<\/strong><\/p>\n
Making New Technologies in Nairobi: the Restricting Imaginations<\/strong><\/h2>\n
In the previous part of the paper, we saw that Nairobi\u2019s tech scene is presented and perceived as being revolutionary for two reasons: it empowers manufacturers and hardware entrepreneurs to tackle prototyping challenges, and it counters stereotypes of the Global South as a passive place that is dependent on technology from the Global North. In the midst of a revolutionary vibe that represents a collective agenda with individuals who determine their own paths (as Sivek [2011, p.21] describes the representation of makers), techies face the problematic acquisition of money. The following section illustrates the crux of the paper, namely how funding issues in Nairobi differentiate its tech scene from other places in the world by showing postcolonial trajectories of \u2018dancing to tunes\u2019 and of \u2018strings played out\u2019 and how those dependencies lead to the constant balancing between the aims of start-ups and tech-oriented people and the investors\u2019 visions.<\/p>\n
Money with Strings Attached<\/h3>\n
As already stated in the introduction, people who work to develop new (hardware) technology face various challenges in Kenya. Besides the high taxes on imported goods and thus the difficult access to resources and machines to prototype, one of the toughest parts of working on a technological idea is gaining the funding to work on it.[7]<\/a> Until now, the priority for local investors in Kenya has lain in the property market. A start-up owner explains why it is difficult to find local funding: \u201cIt’s difficult to get angel investors because the property market returns fifteen percent and it’s quite a low risk. So no one is ever going to invest in higher risk and lower return\u201d (start-up founder, interview, 2017). Therefore, most of the funds for tech start-ups come from internationally owned firms and organizations that intentionally seek to invest in technological innovations (Njugunah, 2016). In general, the tech scene in Nairobi is characterized by a high number of international private investors, venture capitalists, philanthropic foundations and development agencies that fund innovative people and their ideas. Furthermore, almost all big technology companies, like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Intel, etc., have established their regional offices in Kenya by now (Marchant, 2015, p.8).<\/p>\n
Negotiating Funders\u2019 Visions of Technology with Social Impact<\/h3>\n
Due to international investors focusing on technology with social impact, many tech developers I talked to in Nairobi problematize the prevalent expectations and imaginations of technological innovations coming from Kenya. One of the leading tech experts in Nairobi characterizes the investor-developer relations as follows:<\/p>\n
A lot of the money we’ve seen either in development projects, private companies\u2019 investment, VC, angel investing, has been very Americentric. When it comes with Americentric values, it comes with an Americentric thinking. [\u2026] American money just wants to know how you change the world. [\u2026] So, it’s all about whatever centric values this money is being attached to. There is no money that doesn’t have strings attached.<\/p>\n
(tech expert and researcher, interview, 2015)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Those \u201cstrings\u201d or imaginations of funders lead to restrictions of who and what is worth of funding. A start-up founder confirmed that it is a must to integrate social impact into the business model to gain funding. According to him, all funders and investors in Nairobi are \u201cimpact investors\u201d:<\/p>\n
They want nice stories and photographs. Because of that it’s not good enough to have a sustainable business that employs people and you make some money and you are not reliant on grants. That’s my definition of impact but for an impact investor, they want you to save the world and reduce carbon emissions and increase access to energy. So the bar is actually higher for companies to get investment here than it is in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n
(head of engineering at a start-up, interview, 2017)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Another research partner of mine explained how investors aiming for social impact set their own milestones and pester start-ups to achieve them: \u201cThey want to know, they want to be sure, they want you to write a lot of literature around your projects and all that. So they are quite conditional\u201d (CEO of an industrial manufacturing company, interview, 2015). Those personal experiences from tech entrepreneurs in Nairobi illustrate what Kish and Fairbairn (2017) wrote when analyzing impact investors (especially those investing in a specific farming project in Ghana): that telling stories about the \u201ccompassionate dedication to pulling people out of poverty\u201d is the only means of \u201chow to measure seeming intangibles such as social impact\u201d (Ibid., p.10). Nevertheless, impact investor ethics center the value systems of the investors themselves, with little (if any) discernible input from broader communities involved or impacted by their work. Their cultural reference points and performative modes of self-fashioning as financiers who \u2018do good while doing well\u2019 can end up erasing the very subjects they purport to serve. (Ibid., p.16)<\/p>\n
Thus, if a technology project promises to achieve an extrinsically pre-defined social impact, it has a higher chance to gain funding. It seems that the researched Kenyan start-ups and their ideas are not treated as potentially self-reliant small businesses, but as possible success stories about technological impact in Kenya. The effects of being dependent on the values and visions of financial investors are manifold: a developer is not \u2018allowed\u2019 (or financed) to develop tech without a certain social impact, and the supported start-ups and their products are used as successful stories to tell[8]<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Making New Technologies in Nairobi: the Performance of Poverty <\/strong><\/h2>\n
As we have seen, the imaginations of funders regarding a specific kind of helpless \u2018Africa\u2019 can have severe consequences for technological developers in Nairobi, such as the need to follow unwritten rules of how to behave, produce and discuss technological innovation. Besides the pressure on individuals, start-ups and places of innovation, the circumstances described also have several performative effects. In the final part of this paper, I would like to draw on Butler\u2019s (2010) latest notion of performativity and show that the dominance of social entrepreneurship practices in a postcolonial context implies a reproduction of (post)colonial imaginations and, thus, processes of \u201cothering\u201d (Spivak 1985) and the performance of poverty.<\/p>\n
The belief, as embraced by the international funders and investors in Nairobi, that tech can solve social problems has already been criticized by various scholars. The origin of this belief is predominantly ascribed to Silicon Valley. Evgeny Mozorov (2013), one of the most vocal critics of Silicon Valley, claims that the technological scene is pervaded by the \u201cideology of solutionism\u201d, which he describes as \u201can intellectual pathology that recognizes problems as problems based on just one criterion: whether they are \u201csolvable\u201d with a nice and clean technological solution at our disposal\u201d (Ibid.). He claims that not all problems defined by tech companies are real problems, and that problems with structural or fundamental reasons might need greater institutional intervention and not just \u201cquick technological fixes\u201d (Ibid.). Silicon Valley seems to be a vital promoter of social entrepreneurship while boosting \u201cthe idea that entrepreneurship is a catch-all solution, and that a startup culture is the best way to solve any problem\u201d (Marwick, 2013). Dey and Steyaert (2010, p.88) mention that social entrepreneurship has become a grand narrative,[9]<\/a> which enthuses the media, policy makers, as well as academia. They describe the narrative as \u201can individualized, messianistic script that incorporates a model of harmonious social change\u201d (Ibid., p.87), whereby the social entrepreneur becomes the active creator \u00a0and its social context stays passive and awaiting. For Dey and Steyaert, the most problematic feature of social entrepreneurship as a grand narrative is its use as a \u201cgeneral problem-solving blueprint [\u2026] that is applicable to any type of context, historical, cultural, and political\u201d (Ibid., p.89).<\/p>\n
For this reason, I call the development of technology with social impact based on generalized and exoticized imaginations of specific customers and their contexts in an African country a performance of poverty. By referring to Butler\u2019s (2010) socio-material notion of performativity, I want to emphasize that relations such as those between investors and developers, boundaries between a putative Global South and North and norms of what to build and what not, are not pre-given, but enacted or \u201cinvented\u201d, as Butler says. \u201cNorms are in the process of being elaborated, adapted for new purposes, and their continuing life, even their adaptability, depends on the inventiveness by which they are produced time and again\u201d (Ibid., p.154). The reiterative process of performing deficient environments by building technology that should have social impact on broad problems like poverty includes the constant negotiation between the start-ups\u2019 and developers\u2019 business models and technological ideas and the investors\u2019 aims and visions. Thus, although actors in Nairobi criticize the dominance of international imaginations of their contexts, they are also used and reinforced by the same actors (people, start-ups or organizations) to gain money and satisfy investors. Avle and Lindtner (2016, p.2234) also found out that the people they have worked with in Accra and Shenzhen \u201cchallenged the notion that the west was the supposed center of contemporary design and innovation, while they also productively leveraged the discourse on innovation at the periphery for their entrepreneurial practice\u201d. Those performative practices – of both changing the discourse on a lagging Africa as well as developing technology to solve poverty issues \u2013 materialize and stabilize[10]<\/a>\u00a0the norms of social impact in Nairobi\u2019s tech scene.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n
In this paper, I showed two sides of the emerging maker and hardware scene in Nairobi. First, I illustrated the euphoria about \u201crevolutionary\u201d spaces of technological development regarding educational and work possibilities \u2013 be it in academia or in the statements of members of the tech scene. Furthermore, I elaborated that the euphoria has an additional reason, which is deeply rooted in (post)colonial history: namely, the possibility to fight stereotypes of a Sub-Saharan Africa that is dependent on technology from the Global North. These stereotypes are fought by creating awareness around Nairobi as a site of tech development that is globally comparable. In this regard, the branding \u201cMade in Africa, for Africa\u201d is used to position one\u2019s \u201cwork as previously outside and now participating in a global market\u201d (Avle and Lindtner, 2016, p.2241).<\/p>\n
Second, I showed that, in the midst of the idealism of raising awareness about knowledge production in Nairobi, techies are not faced with \u201cthe harsh realities of Africa\u201d, but rather the harsh realities of business life: the acquisition of money. By drawing on further research insights, the continuing postcolonial power-asymmetries were depicted as manifested in the relations between international investors\/funders and start-ups\/makers. The monetary relationships include more than financial investment: they include negotiations between the funders\u2019 moral requirements based on tech-deterministic social-impact aims and the start-ups\u2019 own understandings of impact, technology and business models. By looking at the imaginations of global investors and the branding of technology that is developed \u201cfor Africa\u201d, it becomes clear that the need to build technology with social impact \u2018others\u2019 potential customers in Kenya as people in need of solutions. Customers in rural Kenya are predominantly targeted and, thus, the imaginations of rural and poor societies are reproduced. \u2018Africa\u2019 as a whole becomes generalized and exoticized by adhering to stereotypes that \u2018other\u2019 local contexts in relation to sites in the Global North. To conclude, I called the reiterative practices entangled in global discourses on social entrepreneurship, the investors\u2019 (post)colonial imaginations of \u2018Africa\u2019 and the marketing of technology \u201cfor Africa\u201d and its \u201clocal needs\u201d a performance of poverty, whereby norms of what can or should be developed for Kenyan contexts \u2013 and what not \u2013 are performatively stabilized.<\/p>\n
In respect to the Special Issue\u2019s topic \u201cThe Institutionalization of Shared Machine Shops: New Spaces, Networks + Practices\u201d, we can conclude that the emergence of makerspaces throughout the Global South often means an institutionalization and formalization of already existing manufacturing practices. These new spaces of making create various prospects, such as job opportunities. Nevertheless, with institutionalization comes a danger of homogenization; not only the numerous activities and visions of making, which range from activist to commercial or both at the same time (Schrock cited in Davies, 2017, p.21), could be singularized. But especially in a post-colonial context, where for-profits and nonprofits unite in a social impact chorus, it is crucial to not leave makerspaces and practices of making prone to the formalization of the same old imaginations that have haunted African countries since European explorers and colonialists invaded the continent. Therefore, de la Chaux and Okune (2016, p.286) advocate for \u201ca more explicit articulation of the specificities and visions associated with technology entrepreneurship [in Kenya, so that] nonlocal actors [are able] to root their expectations and perspectives in local realities rather than in unexamined hopes and expectations\u201d. Thus, as long as generalizing imaginations of contexts in Africa are not challenged thoroughly, and the respective experts in Nairobi are not listened to or, more importantly, are in charge of investment decisions, the \u201crevolutionary\u201d practices around making and innovating in Nairobi remain restricted. To end on an even more passionate note, I refer to Kish and Fairbairn\u2019s (2017, p.16) beautiful claim:<\/p>\n
To counteract these monovocal narratives, new discursive spaces of dissensus and political levers for contestation must be opened up to hold these investors accountable to the populations impacted by their work.<\/em><\/p>\n
Acknowledgements<\/h2>\n
I am highly grateful to every research partner in Nairobi who contributed to this paper by sharing their knowledge and time with me. I am also thankful for the productive feedback of Lucas Pohl, Christiane Tristl and two anonymous reviewers. As this paper resulted from a presentation at the 4S\/EASST 2016 conference, I also thank the scholars who inspired me the most during those days: Silvia Lindtner, Seyram Avle, Kat Braybrooke, Adrian Smith and Maxigas.<\/p>\n
Notes<\/h2>\n
[1]<\/a> Braybrooke and Jordan (2017) argue that, although practices around making and innovating in places in the Global South have \u201cbeen going on both well before, and also at the same time, as the [maker] movement\u2019s rise in the West\u201d (Ibid., p.30), they were neglected by the dominant Eurocentric narratives around innovations and their origins.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a>The name has been altered in order to accomplish a minimum of anonymity.<\/p>\n
[3]<\/a>iHub is one of the largest and most prominent Technology Hubs in Sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
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about the author<\/h2>\n
Alev<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Coban<\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u00a0is a PhD student at the Department of Human Geography in Frankfurt. Interested in STS, postcolonial and ethnographic approaches focusing on global \u2018South-North\u2019 relations, she looks at places and practices of innovation in Nairobi. Specifically, she is interested in the socio-material practices of prototyping, making and innovating in the context of tremendous investment in technological development by multinationals and development organizations. Therefore, she highlights the techno-politics in engineering and hardware projects, the working conditions in makerspaces and the post-colonial specifics of Nairobi\u2019s tech scene.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Alev<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>holds a B.A. in\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u2018<\/span><\/span>African Development Studies of Geography<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>and a M.A. in<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u2018<\/span><\/span>Geographies of Globalization: Markets and Metropolises<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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By Alev Coban Open as PDF Introduction Do we have our own inherent culture that informs how we go about building stuff, or are we just dancing to the tune of whoever wants to listen?! (tech expert and researcher, interview, 2015) \u00a0All over the world, sites for technological innovation gain<\/p>\n
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":7060,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template_full_width.php","meta":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7010"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7010"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7766,"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7010\/revisions\/7766"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peerproduction.net\/editsuite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}