The role of infrastructure and technology
Ambition and great expectations are powerful drivers of the current infrastructure boom and the resurrection of megaprojects all over the African continent. Megaprojects may be considered as ‘aspirational projects’ (Müller-Mahn 2020), insofar as “they serve as tools of future-making, as iconic landmarks of transformation” (Müller-Mahn et al. 2021). Under these conditions, the pathways into the future are highly influenced by technological innovation and the availability of new technologies, closely connected to the expansion of infrastructure.
New technologies have spurred an ‘information revolution’, as Murphy and Carmody (2015) show in a study of South Africa and Tanzania. The introduction of mobile phones was a game-changer for telecommunication, causing an unprecedented leap-frogging development by connecting people without land lines or a stable electricity supply. By 2022, the number of mobile-phone subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa had reached 489 million, equivalent to a penetration rate of 43 per cent, and it is expected to rise further.
1 https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/connectivity-for-good/mobile-economy/sub-saharan-africa/ [Accessed 18.12.2024] Mobile internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 170 million in 2017 to 290 million in 2022.
2 https://businessday.ng/technology/article/africas-mobile-internet-users-rise-to-71-in-2022/ [Accessed 18.12.2024] Mobile connectivity has become a major driver of digital and socioeconomic transformation all over the continent. It opens up astonishing new opportunities, not only in the urban centres, but also and perhaps even more so in the rural peripheries. Mobile-money services were first introduced in Kenya and Tanzania in 2007 and soon spread all over the continent. M-PESA provides financial services for people who own a mobile phone, but have no bank account. It allows them to send or receive money, receive salaries, make payments, or top-up airtime.
The widespread use of mobile phones and mobile money creates a new intensity of connections between urban centres and rural areas, which is particularly relevant in the context of mass migration and urbanization. In a case study of two villages in Uganda, Prince Guma (this volume) shows how regular phone calls and money transfers between relatives and friends help to maintain the relations between migrants and those who have stayed behind. Matecjek et al. (this volume) deal with smart agricultural applications and trace the manifold ways they are brought forward to farmers. Whereas Guma finds that mobile-phone applications and especially mobile-money transfers are real game-changers in southwestern Uganda and bring countryside and urban areas closer together, Matecjek et al. view smartphone applications in agriculture rather sceptically and find more vision and promise than actual advancement. Technological innovations are also prominent in the energy field. Kenya has made major progress in its transition towards renewable energies. Geothermal energy and wind power are rapidly gaining in significance. Rural areas of northern Kenya – stretches of land that until recently only contributed livestock to the markets of central Kenya’s cities – now supply energy to cities (see Greiner et al. this volume).