The State, Computers, and African Development: The Information Non-Revolution
Bruce J. Berman · 2021
Awareness in African governments of the importance of computing has grown apace with the deepening economic crisis of the 1980s. Computers are viewed as an express train bypassing the way stations of older forms of industrialization to arrive directly at the affluent and ecologically responsible ‘information society’ of the future. Whatever the abstract technical capabilities of computers, the social and political circumstances of their introduction into bureaucracies has been distinctly conservative and non-revolutionary. The colonial foundation of the bureaucratic apparatus of African states was based on a concept of an authoritarian and paternalistic “guardian” bureaucracy ruling a dependent and backward population. The expectations of the enthusiasts who proclaim the computer “revolution” are largely idle fantasies that contain little understanding of the social and the political factors which shape the character and consequences of the computers.