Ep216 - Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga | African Innovation

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.

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