Side@Ways

de Mirjam de Bruijn, Inge Brinkman, Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Marginality does not mean isolation. In Africa where people are permanently on the move in search, inter alia, of a ëbetter elsewhereí, marginality means disconnection to obvious possibilities and the invisibility of the myriad connections that make life possible for the ordinarily sidestepped. This book is about the workings of networks of the mobile in Africa, a continent usually associated with the ëglobal shadowsí of the world. How do changes in the possibilities for communication, with the recent hype of mobile technology, influence the social and economic dynamics in Africaís mobile margins? To what extent is the freedom associated with new Information and Communication Technologies reality or disillusion for people dwelling in the margins? Are ordinary Africans increasingly Side@Ways? How social are these emergent Side@Ways? Contributions to answering these and related questions are harvested from ethnographic insights by team members of the WOTRO funded ëMobile Africa revisitedí research programme hosted by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.