Performing Technocapitalism: The Politics and Affects of Postcolonial Technology Entrepreneurship in Kenya

In Kenya, technology entrepreneurs and makers have to employ their work and emotions in order to re-script their peripheral positionalities within technocapitalism and make Kenya a place for technology development. Based on ethnographic research in makerspaces and co-working spaces in Nairobi, Alev Coban argues that postcolonial technology entrepreneurship is neoliberal and inherently political work. Technology developers, narratives, prototypes, and digital fabrication tools unite to achieve ambiguous Kenyan futures of technocapitalist market integration and decolonial emancipation in order to foster national well-being and disentangle Kenya from exploitative global structures.

Alev Coban is a feminist and digital geographer. She worked as a research assistant and lecturer at the Department of Human Geography at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. She studied African Development Studies of Geography, Law in Africa and Human Geography in Bayreuth and Frankfurt and Design Thinking at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam. Her research interests include Feminist and Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies, Affect and Care Theories, Digital Work, Emancipatory Technologies, Makerspaces, East Africa and Ethnography.