https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8511-5664
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ABSTRACT
Since its inception in the 1990s, mobile telephony in Africa has evolved, reflecting varied advances in technology. These advances have become particularly reminiscent of the role of mobile technologies in everyday facets of life. In this paper, we examine infrastructural configurations of mobile telephony in an urban African context. We demonstrate how urban Africa is being instrumented through the incoming of mobile telephony, but also how the convergence of the digital and the physical is materializing through the everyday use and appropriation of mobile phone-based technologies. We make this contribution through illustrations and vignettes – including Mkokoteni handcart operations, electricity “token” meter connections, and mobile phone kiosk processes – from Buru Buru, an estate in Nairobi. Thus, we place our analysis within recent area studies scholarship, drawing perspectives from science, technology and society studies, infrastructure studies and urban studies. We contend that the variegated infrastructural configurations of mobile telephony challenge ingrained accounts of technological determinism, not least within conventional area studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Also known as a subscriber identity module, a SIM card is a removable smart card that stores identification information for mobile phones.
2 SMS stands for ‘Short Message Service’ and refers to standard text messages mobile phones.
3 Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) is a communications protocol used by mobile phones to communicate with the mobile network operator’s computers.
4 A mobile-based financial package account by Equity Bank, Kenya on Safaricom M-Pesa that helps clients save easily and offers interest on savings, as well as lending and insurance facilities.
5 M-Shwari is a paperless banking service offered through M-PESA that enables the user to open and operate an account through the mobile phone, via M-PESA, without the need to visit a bank.
6 Fuliza M-pesa is a service launched by Safaricom that allows registered M-Pesa users to transact even if there is insufficient funds on their M account – the extra money is carried over as a loan that is immediately deducted whenever one recharges their M-Pesa account.
7 Mkokoteni is a Swahili word for a two-wheeled trolley pushed or drawn by hand, usually used by traders to ferry heavy goods from one place to another – often in major towns and city suburbs.
8 Robinson, “Comparative Urbanism,” 188.
9 Myers, African Cities.
10 We recognise that over the last two decades, research on world cities and global cities has unsettled the nation-state as the default unit of analysis in social science. Rather than seeing the world as comprised of a mosaic of national political and social units, alternative geographies of networks connecting cities and urban regions have risen to prominence. See, Bunnell, “City Networks as Alternative Geographies,” 27–43.
11 See, Myers, Rethinking Urbanism.
12 Ferguson, Global Shadows.
13 Castells et al., “The Mobile Communication Society,” 19.
14 Koch, “Urban ‘Utopias’,” 2445.
15 Castells et al., “The Mobile Communication Society,” 92.
16 Manica and Vescovi, “Mobile Telephony in Kenya”; Mbiti and Weil, “Mobile Banking”; Oduor et al., “How Technology Supports Family Communication.”
17 Ndemo and Weiss, Digital Kenya, 509; Tonny and Sullivan, “Money, Real Quick.”
18 De Bruijn, “Mobile Phones.”
19 Cardon, “Innovation par l’usage”; Chéneau-Loquay, “Innovative Ways,” 3.
20 Buku and Meredith, “Safaricom and M-Pesa in Kenya”; Jack and Suri, “The Economics of M-PESA”; Mbiti and Weil, “Mobile Banking.”
21 Kamga and Cishahayo, “Information and Communication Technologies.”
22 Buku and Meredith, “Safaricom and M-Pesa in Kenya”; Jack and Suri “The Economics of M-PESA”; Mbiti and Weil “Mobile Banking.”; Chéneau-Loquay, “Innovative Ways,” 3; Cardon, “Innovation par l’usage”; Hahn and Kibora,“The Domestication of the Mobile Phone”.
23 Chéneau-Loquay, “Innovative Ways,” 3; Cardon, “Innovation par l’usage”; Hahn and Kibora “The Domestication of the Mobile Phone”; Manica and Vescovi, “Mobile Telephony in Kenya.”
24 That is, where newly innovative concepts bypass a trajectory of their predecessor.
25 Ndemo and Weiss, Digital Kenya, 509.
26 Muchiri, A Handbook of Mobile Money Business in Kenya.
27 Madise, The Regulation of Mobile Money.
28 Ndemo and Weiss, Digital Kenya, 509; OmwansaTonny and Sullivan, “Money, Real Quick.”
29 Ward, “Internet Consumption in Ireland.”
30 Berker et al., Domestication of Media and Technology, 14.
31 Achieng, “Breaking the Cycle,” 251.
32 Ito et al., “Technosocial Situations,” 259–260.
33 Chéneau-Loquay, “Innovative Ways,” 3.
34 Ibid.
35 Lawhon et al., “Thinking through Heterogeneous Infrastructure,” 722.
36 See, also, the work of Anand et al., “The Promise of Infrastructure”; Guma, “Incompleteness of Urban Infrastructures,” 728–750; Guma, “Recasting Provisional Urban Worlds,” 1–16; Larkin, “Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure,” 327–343; Von Schnitzler, “Traveling Technologies,” 670–693; and others, which addresses processes of commodification of basic infrastructure, different moral economies of the metered electricity and piped water.
37 Mutongi, Matatus.
38 Nyabola, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics.
39 Kimari, “The Story of a Pump”; and Kimari and Ernston, “Imperial Remains and Imperial Invitations.”
40 Kimari, “The Story of a Pump.”
41 Lawhon, “Thinking Through Heterogeneous Infrastructure.”
42 Kahora and Mwangi “Remapping Buru Buru,” 162–168.
43 See, e.g. Godin, Models of Innovation.
44 A Till Number is a special business service number that allows customers to pay for goods and services through a mobile payment channel such as M-Pesa.
45 Duka is Swahili for ‘shop’.
46 Nana, owns kiosks at Mutindwa market where she sells second hand phones and spare parts; Doga, repairs phones and watches at a corner shop.
47 Mark, an M-Pesa owner whose kiosk triples as a phone shop and cooking gas refill point and offers photocopy services in a duka at the heart of the estate.
48 Jere, a long-time mobile money kiosk owner whose kiosks sells general basic household items including food items;
49 Esther, M-Pesa and Bank agent and kiosk owner, also sells electronics.
50 e.g. Jimmy, resident of Buru Buru who works in the central business district; Kisio, resident of Buru Buru for 13 years; Moses, resident of Buru Buru; Mark, water supplier at Mutindwa market.
51 Moses, Kisio’s neighbour and friend.
52 Jimmy, resident of Buru Buru who works in the central business district.
53 A mobile phone-based soft-loan facility launched in 2015 by Safaricom to keep pre-paid meter clients from darkness in case of a black-out where users are able to acquire electricity tokens on credit in real time.
54 Teddy, electricity token user at his shop and household.
55 Jua Kali is Swahili for “fierce sun”, an old phrase referring to tradespeople, travelling pedlars, artisans and other kinds of labourers that work under scorching daytime conditions.
56 Tom, Mkokoteni service provider in Buru Buru; Waithaka, Mkokoteni service provider in Mutindwa market; Teddy, electricity Token user at his shop at her shop and household.
57 Tom, Mkokoteni service provider in Buru.
58 Awuor – Mkokoteni around Mutindwa market too.
59 Simone, “People as Infrastructure,” 425.
60 Robinson, “Comparative Urbanism,” 188.