Iginio Gagliardone

University of the Witwatersrand

Iginio Gagliardone teaches media and communication at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and is an associate research fellow in new media and human rights at the University of Oxford. He has been living between Italy, Ethiopia, the UK, and South Africa, researching the relationship between new media, political change, and human development, and exploring the emergence of distinctive models of the information society in the Global South. His latest book – "The Politics of Technology in Africa" – was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016 and he is currently completing a new manuscript for ZED on China’s influence on Africa’s information societies.

Articles by Iginio Gagliardone

Geopolitics

China and the Building of Africa’s Information Societies

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Despite suspicions, China's engagement in developing Africa's telecom infrastructure has not led to an imposition of an authoritarian model of information control on the continent. Concerns should rather focus on the promotion of a top-down governmental model of development, which has proved inefficient.