The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Recolonisation of Africa

Front matter

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Routledge Contemporary Africa

THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE RECOLONISATION OF AFRICA

Contents

Foreword vill Preface xl Acronyms xii Acknowledgements xiv

1 Data coloniality: A decolonial perspective of

Africa and the 4IR 1 2 Historicising Africa’s subjugation 17 3 Contextualising the colonial project in Africa 33 4 Data mining, harvesting, and datafication 67

Foreword

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) consolidates and takes effect, humanity and other forms of life are undergoing irresistible, irreversible and universal social, economic, and legal transformation based on the massive appropriation of social life through data extraction. In the 4IR, capitalism took a new turn, away from focusing on materials and goods towards services. The 4IR is essentially a services revolution brought about by the merging of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information communication technology (ICT), among others in the process blurring the traditional boundaries between the physical, the digital, and the biological worlds. This resulted in new ways of thinking and doing, aided by vast amounts of information and data harvested from people’s daily lives, hence the Internet of Things among many technology-enabled services.

In the 4IR, the evolution of episteme has taken another turn and its relation to being which once again excludes the black people, broadly defined. With the history of exclusion, slavery, colonialism, and perpetual denial into personhood, black people are still struggling to be part of the thinking beings and always grapple with how to enter the realm of knowledge production. Stated differently, black people, the majority of them African, lack the right to rights. The 4IR will undoubtedly complicate the quest for black people to enter and be accepted into the realm of humanity.

In the 4IR, the thinking and cognitive space has new entrants, trans-humans, robo-humans, and other forms of enhanced humanity who occupy an ontological position higher than that of black people. The 4IR is therefore another sad moment in the life of black people as they slide lower and lower on the ontological ladder, whose apex is occupied by white Caucasian males and the bottom is occupied by black women.

Knowledge production is shifting from the human being towards online entities that are now playing the role of cognitive thinking, imagination, and creativity. Intelligence is now artificial, and AI is now responsible for the creation of a new reality to which we all belong to.

Who are those responsible for creating this new reality? Who are the new Philosopher Kings? The new Philosopher Kings are the emerging tech oligarchy that is replacing the political oligarchy. They own and control big data,

Foreword ix artificial intelligence, online communities, and the online economy. They harvest data, process it, commodify it, and hence make data capital. Like all forms of capital, data extraction is not only unethical but brutal and unforgiving. Data is capital, the new gold, and oil. Like oil and gold before it, data is power and like all forms of power, it is deployable in political spaces in order to predetermine, influence, and pre-empt political decisions. Indeed democracy and many other political processes and outcomes are under threat of being subverted courtesy of the 4IR and many of its gismos. This, in turn, will result in the entrenchment of coloniality especially in Africa where there are weak accountability institutions and unethical and unjust leadership.

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com