Episode 143 of Africa Past and Present — the podcast about African history, culture, and politics — is now available at https://afripod.aodl.org/fullPodcast/episode=143/ and on the usual platforms.
In this episode, Reginold Royston (University of Wisconsin-Madison) discusses his new book, Pan-African Futurism: Ghana and the Paradox of Technology for Development (University of California Press, 2025). He delves into the “digital divide” between Global North and South and how Ghana’s activist-software developers and digital diaspora are using IT for economic reasons and also to gain greater political autonomy. A discussion of Royston’s digital ethnographic method and research on African podcasting concludes the interview.
Africa Past and Present is hosted by Dr. Peter Alegi and co-produced by Matrix: Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, the African Studies Center, and the Department of History at Michigan State University.