Experiment Rural Development: Piloting Digital Technologies in Southern Tanzania

Abstract

Since digitization has become part of the overarching development agendas for the Global South (ICT4D), agricultural modernization is increasingly being realized in light of mobile connectivity, Big Data, artificial intelligence and new sensor technologies. In doing so, implementing actors are no longer relying solely on established methods and concepts to carry out agricultural development projects, but are testing new approaches that will also serve to generate further knowledge about these technologies in their new settings of application. By testing them in the field, they seem to be reviving the idea of “Africa as a living laboratory” developed by Tilley (2011) in the colonial context. Building on this and inspired by laboratory ethnographies in STS research, in this presentation I will present theoretical underpinnings and an ethnographic approach I followed as I explored the practices of testing and developing digital technologies in rural Tanzania. Rather than simply viewing these digital technologies as welcome tools to promote connectivity, empowerment, and increased production-as is commonly promoted in development policy-my approach foregrounds the unintended consequences of setting up, maintaining, and outcomes of pilot projects. In particular, three major ambivalences emerge: Although planning digital development is supposed to be smart, building digital infrastructures is based on unpaid, manual labor. Despite empowering effects through digital connectivity, it also creates new dependencies. Even though digital information exchange is supposed to enable rapid action, it also has a de-skilling effect on farm actors. Against this background, I will address the paradoxical nature of these living laboratories and the contradictory logics between experimentation and development that they entail.