African Motors: Technology, Gender and the History of Development

Joshua Grace’s African Motors: Technology, Gender, and the History of Development is a wonderful addition to the quickly expanding literature on how people in nations outside of rich, Western ones interpreted, used, and remade technologies according to their own needs and values. Drawing on years of archival research, interviews, and ethnographic observation, Grace examines the role of mechanics, drivers, and passengers in creating a ‘uniquely African form’ of automobile use in Tanzania between the 1800s and the early 2000s. African Motors is primarily grounded in the literatures of mobility studies and Science and Technology Studies of Africa, though it is full of interesting details and thoughts that will fascinate people working outside these fields. Grace begins his tale building on historian Gabrielle Hecht and others who have written about how Europeans and Americans perceived the technological realities of the African continent.1 Hecht’s argument: ‘Armed with Maxim guns and industrial goods, they saw artisanally produced African technologies as proof of primitive existence. “Africa” became seen as a place without “technology”,’ is directly quoted in the introduction to the book (pp. 1–4). Grace argues that this view simply does not reflect reality on the ground in African nations. Even if we focus on modern industrial goods and not domestically created tools with long traditions, like pots and mortars and pestles, which surely fit broad definitions of ‘technology,’ African localities are replete with technologies.