North-South collaborations as a way of ‘not knowing Africa’: researching digital technologies in Kenya

Abstract

In the study of Africa and African studies in particular, debates abound on the nature, patterns and the direction of knowledge produced about and on Africans. For much of these debates, the main questions always centre on methodologies, epistemological subjectivities and the hierarchies of power around the knowledge produced. With African universities and research institutions contributing only 1% of the total budget towards research (Fonn et al. 2018) fears that most of the knowledge produced on Africa is coming from outside the continent will only grow worse. Regarding African studies, where the so named ‘indexed/international journals’ are mostly domiciled in the global North; supported by a comparatively advanced research infrastructure, and in a context where Western-based funding organisations now require ‘partners’ and ‘collaborations’ from the continent, reflections on North-South relations among researchers are timely. In this paper, we wish to reflect on a research grant that involved a team from Kenya (Which we were part of), and academic colleagues from a famous North American Communications School where we were jointly involved in a research project on digital technologies and electoral violence mapping. We use this experience to show how such collaborations exemplify how Africa is understood as an object of research and a mere source of primary data. We argue that, sometimes, the outcomes of these processes are plausible, yet generalised reductionist approaches to knowing Africa.