Overview

The Post-Global City seeks to open a new field of analytical inquiry that examines knowledge production and technological developments in urban Africa rooted in local, historical realities, while also partaking in transnational, global processes. This work explores the ways in which urban residents have utilized technologies and networks to operate around, under, and beyond the state and the international “order,” and challenges the stereotypical images of Africa as a continent either devoid of technology or filled with either broken technologies or technologies from the Global North or Asia. This book focuses on accounts and critiques of new “Rising Africa” ideologies, examining megaprojects such as geothermal and hydroelectric plants with new networked startups that circumvent state and patriarchal hierarchies, women vendors selling online, youths designing and constructing oil refining technologies and tech startups working across diasporas. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork carried out in urban spaces in Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Gabon, Cameroon, and Tanzania, The Post-Global City brings together voices from Africa, Europe, and the United States to inquire into the dialectics between technology and the urban on the African continent.

Full Product Details

Author:   Katrien Pype ,  Omolade Adunbi ,  Michael M.J. Fischer
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
Imprint:   The University of Michigan Press
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780472057825

ISBN 10:   0472057820
Pages:   276
Publication Date:   03 March 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Biographies Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Post-Global City Formations: Technology and Africa’s Urban Futures Omolade Adunbi, Katrien Pype, and Michael M.J. Fischer Chapter 1: The Post-Global City. South-South Geographies and Political Affects in Kinshasa’s Emerging Tech Scene Katrien Pype Chapter 2: Technologies of Dream Life and the Life of Dreams in Afrodystopia Joseph Tonda, translated by Katrien Pype Chapter 3. Inga as Enclave: the (dis)comfort of being serious men Barbara Carbon Chapter 4: Enchanting Urban Futures through Geothermal Explorations in Nakuru, Kenya Nick Rahier Chapter 5: Dreaming about X-rays in Kikwit: Visibility, medical technology, and fracture care in an intermediate Congolese city Trisha Phippard Chapter 6: The « bend-skin », a connector in and co-constructor of Mbouda. Or, how post-global flows enable urban mobility Vivien M. Meli, translated by Victoria Bernal and Katrien Pype Chapter 7 Techni-city and co-citizenship: Campus connectivity in Tanzania Koen Stroeken and Mohamed Ghasia Chapter 8: Digital technology and urban entrepreneurship: gendered tactics of online entrepreneurship in and from pre-war Khartoum Griet Steel Chapter 9. The Oil Cities: Urbanity, Engineers, and Innovators in the Construction of Refineries in Nigeria Omolade Adunbi Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Katrien Pype is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven University and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Omolade Adunbi is Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies and the Director of the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan. Michael M. J. Fischer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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