Engineering Entrepreneurship & Innovation

This paper looks at the role of sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding the governance of the sharing economy in two different locations: Canada and United States. Policy makers are trying to tackle the sharing economy without potentially creating negative impact on innovation. While much of the recent discourse around the sharing economy portrays it negatively, early peer-to-peer digital platforms were envisioned as new pathways toward grassroots, inclusive, fair and low-impact economies (Schor, 2016). However Jasanoff & Kim argue that the evaluation of the positive and negative aspects of technological change have always been influenced by specific tacit or explicit political imaginations of nations in terms of how to power modern social life (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013, p. 190). Using a comparative approach, this paper analyzes these imaginations as they are expressed through policy reports and recommendations. The study shows that the sharing economy appears to be seeking a set of diverse imaginaries including new economic freedom, sustainable consumption, decentralized society, demise of social hierarchies and regulatory freedom.

AI technology is capturing the African imaginations as a gateway to progress and prosperity. There is a growing interest in AI by different actors across the continent including scientists, researchers, humanitarian and aid organizations, academic institutions, tech start-ups, and media organizations. Several African states are looking to adopt AI technology to capture economic growth and development opportunities. On the other hand, African researchers highlight the gap in regulatory frameworks and policies that govern the development of AI in the continent. They argue that this could lead to AI technology exacerbating problems of inequalities and injustice in the continent. However, most of the literature on AI ethics is biased toward Euro-American perspectives and lack the understanding of how AI development is apprehended in the Global South, and particularly Africa. Drawing on the case study of the first African Master's in Machine Intelligence program, this paper argues for looking beyond the question of ethics in AI and examining AI governance issues through the analytical lens of the raciality of computing and the political economy of technoscience to understand AI development in Africa. By doing so, this paper seeks a different theorization for AI ethics from the South that is based on lived experiences of those in the margins and avoids the framings of technological futures that simplistically pathologize or celebrate Africa.

This chapter examines the authoritarian practices of Omar al-Bashir and traces the evolution of the Sudanese authoritarian state. Following the December 2018 uprising that ousted the regime of Bashir, Sudan seems to be drifting away from democratic reform and inching back into authoritarian governance. This chapter argues that Bashir authoritarian practices and his post- uprising legacy can be understood within the context of authoritarianism evolution and political struggle in Sudan. For example, previous repressive regimes of Gen. Abboud and Gen. Nimeiry provided the pretext from which Bashir coercive practices evolved. Abboud’s authoritarianism was characterized by arbitrary oppressive measures and narrow political base with no ideological underpinnings while Nimeiry relied on networks of patron-client including senior generals, bureaucrats, and members of opposition parties to help preserve his regime and consolidate his power. On the other hand, Bashir used several authoritarian practices including Tamkeen (empowerment) oppressive policy, ethno-politics, and foreign alliances to stay in power. Bashir’s autocracy was built on ideological and political support from his National Congress Party as the basis for Tamkeen practices. Tamkeen’s objective was to deliberately purge public institutions, army, police, and the judiciary from career bureaucrats that are not members of his party or not seen as loyalist to Bashir’s Islamist regime. Tamkeen and state coercion are intertwined as Bashir used the National Intelligence and Security Service to control both economic and public life in the country. Bashir used ethno-politics to create paramilitary groups such as the Rapid Support Forces, a state-controlled offshoot of the Janjaweed. In addition, he sought regional and international alliances with MENA states to support the fiscal health of his security apparatus and increased intelligence and security cooperation with the US and EU. However, the unraveling of the authoritarian rule of Bashir was caused by many factors that are linked to the authoritarian nature of Bashir’s autocracy.

The main argument of this article is that natural language processing (NLP) projects of Indigenous African languages can be understood as an effort to restore and preserve Africa's memory in the digital. Language has always occupied a particular place in the African decolonial imaginary. Several African states embarked on processes of Africanisation of postcolonial institutions in their respective national contexts. One of the main features of this project in many African countries was the restoration of African languages in education and public service. Taking a social constructivist approach rooted in science and technology studies and looking through the analytical lens of decoloniality in Africa, I conceptualise NLP models of Indigenous African languages as liberating artifacts. I mobilise decolonial theory to look at language as a technology that can be used to dis-member and remember the African subjects of their memory of being as people. The coloniser erased the memory of the African subjugated by cutting off their linguistic connections and instead planted the European memory. From this perspective, decolonisation can be understood as a process of re-memberment that can be achieved through the return of the languages of those whose humanity has been denied or questioned. In this sense, NLP projects offer instances of the digital that represent spaces of restoration and negotiated digital futurities. I contend that these digital spaces in Africa are social spaces of contestation about what common investments should be made, what collective futures are desirable and what are the perceived material consequences of such shared imaginations.

The idea for this special issue emerged from a conversation between the editors (there were three when we began) at one of the most elite institutions in the world, discussing what it felt like to be from a part of the world that looked and felt incredibly different from these hallowed halls. We were all there on generous fellowships that allowed us to be visiting scholars; and we all spent our time there learning not just how academics was done but also how much else needed to be done. We spoke about the need for more 'South-South collaborations' and how we might begin such collaborations, given how difficult it was for us from such faraway places to meet, except where we were-at the heart of elite Western academia. At the outset, we would acknowledge that our time there was truly an enriching and intellectually rewarding experience. It allowed us to come together, to learn from each other, and to think through collaborations, associations, partnerships and indeed friendships that many of us could never have otherwise dreamed of. We are grateful to our hosts and our funders for making it possible for us to be there, and for giving us the opportunity to bring together this Special Issue. The encouragement and support of Professor VV Krishna, who believed this would be a useful enterprise (and believed in us to actually get it done, even when it looked as if we might give up-we missed every single deadline that was set) has been the prime mover in bringing us over the finish line.

New initiatives of machine learning (ML) have become sites of controversies about technoscience, innovation, and global inequalities in Africa. As part of the burgeoning area of arti cial intelligence for development, ML is often framed as a technological answer to long-standing debates about development and modernization in African societies. This chapter examines the embedded assumptions and political imaginaries of Africa's globally marginalized epistemic communities in understanding the social impact of ML in the continent. Looking at these debates through the analytical lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, decoloniality, and alternative modernities, the chapter argues for an understanding of ML as a state-building experiment in postcolonial Africa. From this perspective, this chapter begins to articulate a di erent theorization of sociotechnical practices of ML from a Majority World perspective. It also complements critical literature on the sociology of ML by integrating perspectives from science and technology studies and contemporary African studies.