Paper: "Control, Extract, Legitimate: COVID-19 and Digital Techno-opportunism across Africa" + Noma
Earlier this month in draft papers iii I mentioned a lengthy draft 12k words ... "Society, Technology and COVID19 in Hodges' model" which needs revision (COVID-19 waits for no person):
"COVID's source, global spread, national responses, and management are politicised; a memetic and geopolitical viral response (Kavanagh, Singh and Pillinger, 2021). The hope remains that globally we will get a grip of COVID and learn collectively; even as politics is in play (The Lancet. 2021). COVID revealed itself as signs and symptoms were reported and aggregated, patterns identified, and advice modified accordingly. Routine news was interrupted by a daily round of COVID briefings by governments, their representatives andSocio-technical approaches feature on this blog, in a published paper (bibliography) and in Hodges' model. Socio-Technical can help assure success but they must be tempered - shaped - by taking into consideration the individual (user's) psychology, benefit; and the political aspects - what are the costs, collective benefits and governance?
experts. Charts and statistics were presented, numbers crunched (mechanistically, of course). Some governments, in denial, face a legal charge. Comparisons of national cases and deaths are ongoing, hard truths (proverbial ‘cock-ups’) explained away — rationalised. The global distribution of COVID vaccinations, influenza and booster jabs, lays bare colonial traces of inequity and inequality. A further twist of the south and north seasonal oscillation.
COVID-19 is striking, simultaneously creating opacity and transparency. Accentuated and aggravated by populist governments, COVID is now marked as a pandemic and infodemic (Cinelli, et al, 2020). Post hoc governments and academia must understand the societal and cultural ramifications of news generation, dissemination, and outcomes."
The following paper stood out on twitter (COVID-19 is not a laggard in keeping pace with robots it seems) and will inform my update of the above:
Platzky Miller, J., Sander, A. and Srinivasan, S. (2022), Control,
Extract, Legitimate: COVID-19 and Digital Techno-opportunism across
Africa. Dev Change. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12734
| logic(s)? . Fear - COVID-19attitudes - receptivity (Expectations: now - future? Such actions spoil/taint technology.) individual psychology the 'user' (active/passive..) | socio-TECHNICAL robots digital solutions track and trace apps and vaccine passports (rate of failure) Life - Bio-Sciences TECHNO- |
SOCIO-technical Societies Sustainable Development (Goals?) Social development, history Logics of control, extraction and legitimation Social Determinants of Health |
OPPORTUNISM Political role of public health emergencies in Africa Rwandan government ZoraBots, a Belgian company Commercial Determinants of Health Colonialism: control, power Governance Neglected Neglected diseases - Noma? |
How many lives did a robot save fighting #COVID19 in Rwanda? Short answer: ~none. Long answer: that's not the point. A collab bw @RwandaGov, @Undp and a Belgian robot firm, it's one example of rampant techno-opportunism across #Africa during the pandemic, with worrying effects... pic.twitter.com/6FWtlLR8b8
— Sharath Srinivasan (@sharath_sri) October 22, 2022
Plus: Re. Noma ...
Ioana Cismas (York) - What's in a Frame? A Human Rights Approach to Neglected Tropical Diseases - https://www.york.ac.uk/cahr/events/2022/justice-in-global-health-workshop/
https://philevents.org/event/show/101162
Concept Note in Support of the Inclusion of Noma (Cancrum Oris) on the World Health Organization List of Neglected Tropical Diseases (Commissioned by the Government of Namibia, 2016), 6 pp. (with Marie-Solène Adamou Moussa-Pham).
Srour, M. L., & Baratti-Mayer, D. (2020). Why is noma a neglected-neglected tropical disease?. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 14(8), e0008435. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008435
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965