Technological Change and Techno-Social Systems: Re-Examining Sustainable Development and Digitalisation in Africa

This article argues that understanding currently dominant technological change models in low-and-middle income countries is important to addressing challenges to sustainable development with enhanced knowledge and effective policies. Combining such understanding with using systems thinking, as a theoretical framework, helps in illuminating techno-social systems and their overlaps with economic and human development systems, therefore highlighting possible leverage points for interventions to usher technological change towards sustainable development objectives. The proposed conceptual synthesis between technological change models and systems thinking is then critically applied to case studies related to digitalisation in Africa, where challenges to sustainability are amplified by continuous pressure for technological advancement, making local capabilities a central issue. The case studies examine how continental digitalisation indicators are ahead of industrialisation and human development indicators, with similar issues in digitalising agri-food ecosystems. We show that, while Africa is currently increasing in digitalisation, correlations between digitalisation and sustainable development are not as direct, or necessarily positive, as initially assumed. Similar trends are seen in digitalisation and agri-food ecosystems, where farm-raised data is monetised off-farm, thus removing opportunities for farmers to realise return on their knowledge investment. Examining the cases, using the proposed synthesis approach, reveals that digitalisation can contribute to development indicators when coupled with enhancing employment in productive sectors and that the prevailing order of ‘technology-push, demand-pull’ models suggests more investment in technological improvement. The article contributes to theory by illuminating overlaps between two theoretical/conceptual areas and to praxis by informing alternative policy directions.