Feb 15, 2022
Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science,
technology, and innovation (or STI) rather than a maker of them. In
the book “What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from
Africa?“, 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 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.
The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of
indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the transformation of
everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of
enslaved Africans in America as innovators; the constitutive
appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an
African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities.
These 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.
Originally published in December of 2017.
Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.