ICT and Intercultural Philosophy: An African Exploration

Prof. Dr. Wim van Binsbergen, African Studies Centre, Leiden.

What is the place of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in Africa, and what is the place of Africa in a world increasingly dominated by ICT? The author seeks to explode the apparent contradiction between Africa and ICT. He does so by a two-step argument. In the first part he confronts African thinkers like Mazrui and Gyekye, who have argued the incompatibility between African culture and ICT. Here three statements are discussed and largely dismissed:
(1) (a) ICT is Northern culture, and hence (b) ICT is irreconcilably opposed to African culture
(2) (a) ICT is metalocal world culture, without local specificity and local validity, and hence (b) ICT is in principle devastating for any localising cultural identity like the African one
(3) (a) ICT is inimical to culture, and hence (b) ICT is inimical to the African culture or cultures.
Having advanced a philosophical argument to the effect that ICT is just as much and as little at home in Africa as anywhere else in the contemporary world, the author proceeds in the second part of the paper with a more empirical argument setting forth some of the ways in which the African enculturation of ICT is actually taking shape.