Silicon Elsewhere : Nairobi, Global China, and the Promise of Techno-Capital

Pollio, Andrea

University of California Press（2026/01発売）

University of California Press（2026/01発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 238 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780520413085
• DDC分類 338.260967625

Full Description

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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-capital. 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 technological change in the early twenty-first century.

Contents

Contents
 
Preface
Lists of Abbreviations, Chinese Pinyin Terms, and Kiswahili and Sheng Terms
 
Introduction: The Silicon Savannah's Beijing Connection
1. Silicon States of Development
2. Machines of Data Frontiers
3. Platforms of Algorithmic Suturing
4. Microgeopolitics of Standards
5. Labors of Investability
6. Ethnographies of Techno-Optimism
Coda: Thinking Technology Elsewhere, and Otherwise
 
Notes
Bibliography
Index