Project C04, Smart Futures (Ended December 2021)

1) What visions of (agricultural) development for rural Africa are mediated through mobile information services?

2) How do mobile services translate probabilistic futures into anticipatory instructions by linking scientists, IT specialists, development practitioners and users?

3) How do mobile services transform the way users perceive and act on nature by mediating a specific kind of information and guidance, and thus transform human-nature relations more generally?

To explore the ways in which information and communication technologies have informed both visions and practices of agricultural development in Eastern Africa, we used three different empirical approaches. Combining document analysis, event ethnography on agricultural fairs and conferences, and participant observation with NGOs and farmers involved in diverse agricultural development projects which implement ICTs in pest and disease management, SMS-based weather forecast services, mobile applications to secure land tenure and e-extension systems, we were able to follow the idea of a digital transformation. Starting from the frameworks and reports of major organizations to conference presentations and workshops, to the ways in which these inform the concrete design of the software and related rationalities in the implementation/pilot phase, we finally engaged with the use of the advice sent to farmers and how this is embedded in other sources of knowing nature.

Following our document analysis and the ethnography of some large conferences that brought together practitioners and decision-makers from research institutions, government and non-government agencies and the private sector, it became clear that the current visions about ICT4D and Data4D are primarily based on what is considered as universal expert knowledge. It is characterized by a vision of technological solutionism for development problems, in combination with a strongly entrepreneurial rhetoric. Here, political, economic and social challenges are presented as technical. This way, knowledge is removed from its context: As apparently neutral, technologically collected and processed, information is to be conveyed to the rural population of the Global South to foster development.

Our empirical research, however, put emphasis on the complex coming-together of these visions and respective programs and the local settings and interests (Matejcek & Verne 2021, Matejcek & Verne, accepted, Matejcek et al. submitted). Here it becomes apparent that technical knowledge and information gained through digital technologies is considered more important and objective, and therefore rather superior to local forms of knowledge, with the idea that these technologies may help to overcome the perceived knowledge gap. However, as our insights gained through participant observation in projects disseminating agricultural advisory information show, the encounters between development practitioners taking their visions to the fields and local farmers are hardly as straightforward but rather lead to a hybridization of knowledge, including complex processes of negotiation or even neglect. Focusing on the ways in which different actors interact with technologies, how they translate probabilistic futures into anticipatory instructions, and what role they play both in project’s agendas and context-dependent practices, we found that the new actors and their visions have considerably changed the mechanisms through which agricultural futures should be realized. Key issues, in this regard, are the processes of datafication, gamification and experimentation which form the basis of the two PhD theses which are currently in their writing stage (working titles of PhD theses: “Experiment rural development: Testing Digital Technologies in Southern Tanzania” [Matejcek], “Technologies of Anticipation: Agriculture, Digitalization, and Human-Environment Relations in Kenya” [Rochlitz]).