Silicon Elsewhere - by Andrea Pollio

Book Synopsis

Heralded as Africa's "Silicon Savannah"--a cradle of innovation--Nairobi has become a technology and innovation capital for Kenya and for the continent at large. With a national strategy that has prioritized digital technology for the last two decades, many Chinese digital champions, smaller startups, and investors have since chosen Nairobi as their African landing pad. Mapping the interface between Nairobi's innovation scene and China's digital presence there, Silicon Elsewhere tells a unique story of ingenuity and adaptation, failure and speculation, and hopefulness and pragmatism. Andrea Pollio's ethnography draws on interviews with cautious venture capitalists, renegade entrepreneurs, dedicated bureaucrats, and ambitious data scientists to explore the competing meanings of contemporary techno-capitalism. Moving between leafy coworking spaces and the temperature-controlled rooms of brand-new data centers, Pollio locates Nairobi among the experimental capitals, not peripheries, of technocapitalism in the early twenty-first century.

About the Author

Andrea Pollio is Assistant Professor of Political and Economic Geography at the Department of Urban and Regional Studies of the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, and Research Associate at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa.