People, technology and spaces: towards a new generation of social movements

Editors' note

This paper reflects the activist experience of its author, Philip Thigo of the Nairobi-based Social Development Network (SODNET), one of a new generation of agencies that are seeking to deploy new communication technology for socially emancipatory purposes. The paper makes three very strong claims concerning the political effects of social movement activists deploying ICT. Firstly, it argues that in Kenya, the use of ICT by civil society agencies has helped to open up and enlarge new kinds of political space – ‘self-created spaces’. These spaces offer new kinds of political possibilities in contrast to the organised and managed spaces occupied by more institutionalised and officially registered ‘non-government organisations’. These spaces are new, because popularly accessible communication technologies have opened up public domains for civil politics where no such space existed previously; they constitute fresh domains that are not managed or regulated by authority.

Thigo's second major claim is that these new spaces are arenas that can accommodate a new type of politics. The communicative network that groups such as Ushahidi and Huduma have embedded within the communities in which they are active facilitate quite novel configurations of collective action. These permit the political effectiveness of less organised groups, they broaden the social range of political expression, and they give equality to different voices – through such instruments as crowd-sourcing. These voices can now be heard unmediated by the traditional aggregating agencies such as political parties or the notables and patrons who often profess to speak for communities. Indeed, in enabling the bypassing of conventional channels of patron–client relations, the new technologically networked social movements embody a really formidable challenge to the existing distribution of political power.

However, the sources of political power may be relocating in other ways too. The third claim that can be derived from Thigo's argument is that popular deployment of communication technology is also opening up novel prospects for advancing the state's capacity. The official Kenyan Open Data Initiative described in this paper is an unprecedented effort by an African government to provide information about its functions and resources available to citizens. It doing so it represents an important extension of government functionality. Of course, the state's deployment of information technology can add considerably to its repressive capacity but it can also extend its distributive effectiveness and its moral authority. To be sure, movements such as Huduma and Ushahidi are primarily concerned with empowering poor and rightless groups. However, in their chosen strategy of ‘constructive engagement’, Thigo's people-centred ICT networks might also significantly transform and enlarge the bases of African state power.

Keywords:

• social movements
• people-centred ICT
• Huduma
• Ushahidi
• social transformation

Acknowledgements

This article was based on a paper originally presented to the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA). The author would like to acknowledge and EISA for enabling this current publication and to thank EISA director Denis Kadima for his comments on a draft of this article.

Notes

1. For example, see Susan Booysen (2011) for her references to service delivery protests.

2. Translated from a phrase ‘Aswat Fukara’ by Mohsen Marzouk, an Arab scholar. The phrase means voices of the poor.