Digital Development in East Africa

“This book provides a framework for analyzing infrastructure policymaking that will guide development scholars for years to come.”

—Michael Craw, ​Faculty Member and Director of the Master of Public Administration program, The Evergreen State College, USA

“Bowman’s comparative evaluation of ICTs in East Africa is a must read for anyone interested in the intersection of culture, technology, law, and politics.” 

—L. Jean Camp, ​Professor of Informatics and Director of Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, USA

“Dr. Bowman’s careful fieldwork and analysis unpacks the political economy of ICT implementation in East Africa. She expertly integrates historical, sociological, political, and economic realities that inform ICT policy development and implementation.”

—Dorina Bekoe is a researchstaff member with the Africa program at the Institute

for Defense Analyses USA, and author of Voting in Fear: Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa (2012)

This book uses comparative case study methodology and extensive field work to examine and compare outcomes of four East African nations (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda) that implemented formal Information and Communications Technology policies in the 1990s. Based on extensive fieldwork, the book assesses the emergence of a new policy and technological arena from the turn of the millennium to the present. In addition to tracing the implementation and reception of these policies, Bowman considers to what extent the politics of infrastructure in four connected but distinct African nations have resulted in global participation and equitable distribution and access of infrastructure to all citizens, as well as the impact a recent history of war or peace have on the technological outcomes in these communities. The book provides us with invaluable new data on how policy and politics function in emerging democracies, and illuminates long-overlooked opportunities and conditions necessary for the distribution of new and potentially beneficial technologies in other developing countries. 

Warigia M. Bowman is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Sustainable Energy and Natural Resources Law Program at the University of Tulsa, USA.