STS in Africa: Macro

This essay answers the analytic question: "(How) are economic and legal infrastructures said to shape science and technology in Africa?" Analyses of the economic and legal infrastructures figure heavily in STS scholarship situated in African contexts, especially by those who rely on historical sources. Specific economic and legal infrastructures mentioned include university Institutional Review Board ethics protocols (Biruk 2018); development funding regimes that build and reify “global North” and “global South” inequalities (Biruk 2018; Crane 2010; Coban 2018; Bezuidenhout 2017; Geissler and Tousignant 2016); colonial histories (Tilley 2011; Osseo-Asare 2014; Foster 2017; Breckenridge 2014); economic competitiveness (Tilley 2011) as well as claims to citizenship (von Schnitzler 2013); Bretton Woods structural adjustment programs and the emergence of a neoliberal knowledge economy (Green 2012; Pollock 2014; Okeke 2011); and intellectual property law (Foster 2017; Pollock 2014; Osseo-Asare 2014) (and its overemphasis on individualist notions of authorship).

This essay is part of a broader orals document by Angela Okune querying Science and Technology Studies in Africa. Sub-essays within the orals document can be accessed directly through the following links: Discursive Risk; Deutero; Meta; Macro; Micro; Nano; Techno; Data; Eco.