Coloniality Forces Within the Cold War and Neocolonialism: A Hindrance to Africa's Contributions to Digital Technology

Introduction

The troubling question that one needs to answer is whether the African continent’s supply of raw materials, which depends on the functionality and advancement of digital technology, is not a significant contribution to the wave of digital technology the global world faces today. If that is reality, how is it that Africa’s contributions to digital technology are not recognized, and who will make the world recognize them? This is a troubling question that needs to be answered. This chapter aims to examine coloniality forces within the Cold War and Neocolonialism events and expose factors emerging from them that have hindered Africa’s contributions to digital technology. The contemporary lingering coloniality of power and knowledge in Africa that is still trapping African political leadership and education has led to colonial domination in the African's ways of governance and ways of knowing, seeing, and imagining that the continent contributes to the wave of digitalization are not recognized. Scholars and political leadership classes still praise colonialists and, in their systems of governance and writing, keep praising them instead of protecting natural resources and raw materials on which the wave of digitalization depends.

One can see black political power and regimes in Africa and naively say that colonialism administrations have been entirely eradicated, and most of the periphery is politically organized into independent states, forgetting that African people are still living under crude European exploitation and domination (Ndlovu-Gatseni, 2018). The old colonial hierarchies of whites versus Africans are still alive in Africa and are entangled with the ‘international division of labor and accumulation of capital at a world scale' (Grosfoguel, 2007, p.211). This means that while the establishment of international law and human rights organizations collapsed physical colonialism in the form of European forces imposing foreign governments on Africa, colonial legacies, colonial conditions, and power relations have remained alive and intact. These conditions are worse than colonialism and have affected Africa’s contributions to the wave of digital technology. Coloniality refers to a long-standing pattern of power that emerged from colonialism but defines the culture, labor, intersubjectivity relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p.243). Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of people, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience (Ndlovu-Gatseni, 2018). As modern subjects, Africans still breathe coloniality all the time and every day (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p.243).

This chapter assesses the effects of coloniality on Africa’s contributions to the wave of digital technology. This analysis is done by assessing the effects and problems caused by the Cold War, which came about immediately after the abolition of physical colonialism and neocolonialism forces that are still harming Africans. This analysis is particularly on social, political, and economic governance and their effects on digital technology advancement in Africa. This is because when colonialism was abolished, and African states started gaining independence to address the problems caused by the slave trade and colonialism, the Cold War and Neo-colonialism events kicked in, thwarting any efforts advanced by the Africans to address those problems. Coloniality events are devastating and worsening Africa’s efforts towards contributing to digital technology.