The Politics of Ideology in Information and Communication Technologies for Development: An African Case Study

Abstract: Information and communication technologies have acquired contemporary prominence and are being introduced as new and technologically innovative devices for rapid African development, becoming key cornerstones of the development assistance interventions of the European Union and the G8. But the Dot Force Initiative of the G8 and the various ICT for development programmes of the EU display a modernization and neoliberal approach to development. As a likely consequence, the Africa strategy of Vodafone suggests that this influential transnational corporation is reaping the rewards of a favourable environment for investments, joint ventures and acquisitions created by EU and G8 policy making in Africa. Neo-Marxist critics generally object to the new priority given to ICTs in development and reject the modernization and neoliberal oriented approach inherent in their introduction. For them, dependency and a new imperialism are the likely outcomes of neoliberal development policies. Using critical theory to examine the underlying ideological motivations of ICT for development, this thesis supports the Neo-Marxist critique about the dependency outcome of TNC expansionism, but I argue that both the neoliberal mode of introducing ICTs and the Neo-Marxist opposition to these developments are generally problematic. I recommend that alternative and bottom-up approaches to development should be the preferred ideological basis for ICT for development, transcending the hegemony of neoliberalism and the pessimism of Neo-Marxists.