Digital Matatus: the discursive and material effects of data science in Africa

• In Event: The Politics of Science and Technology in International Development 3

Abstract

One of the ways to get around a city like Nairobi, Kenya, is by catching a matatu. These are privately owned mini-buses that serve the city as a major source of public transportation. They will be recognisable to many because of their brightly painted exteriors, some featuring slogans, ironic comic strips and cartoons. The matatus (or taxis depending where on the continent you are) are regularly held up as symbolic of the chaos of African cities and the shortcomings of state provision. They do not operate in a centrally regulated transportation system and they harbour a murky criminal element with known gangs operating many routes. Since 2012, the matatus of Nairobi have served as an ideal experimental subject for exploring the uses of data science in mapping and ultimately improving the inefficiencies of semi-formal and informal urban transit. The Digital Matatus Project (DMP) brings together scholars from US and Kenyan universities to develop an online, digital map of Nairobi’s matatus, including routes, directions and timetables. The completion of the map, which mimics the London underground map, marks the launch of a worldwide mission to use data science to bring order to the chaos of para-transit in cities across the world. Strikingly, the most problematic cities are located in the Global South. We present a critical reading of the DMP that focusses on its politics and poetics. Maps and statistics represent attempts to manage territory, populations and resources. Read in this way, the DMP can be understood as an exercise in governing urban space. However, ethnographic research reveals that the way the map was made is incongruent with the final product and the mission statement of project leaders. The map’s availability open access quickly renders it unrepresentative in a commercially competitive system, but then, the map also appears to have very little use-value among Nairobi’s residents, who continue to move around the city in much the same way as they always did. In light of these concerns, our question turns on what the digital map is for, if the political purchase and material effects are negligible?

Authors

• Kerry Holden, Queen Mary, University of London

• Matthew Harsh, Cal Poly