Data Sharing in Nairobi: Why, For Whom, and By Whom?

• In Event: Politics and Infrastructures of Data Collaboratives

Abstract

This paper presents emerging insights from an ethnographic comparative study of three Nairobi-based research organizations working in and on technology and development in Africa. The paper reflects on negotiations over privacy, quality, ownership, and ethical responsibility enacted by the processes of sharing qualitative research data with different publics. The paper sheds light on changing ideas about data sharing amongst social scientists in Africa who are responding both to increasing concern that scientific knowledge is not benefiting the communities studied and to growing, global interest in the possible benefits of “open data.”

Author

• Angela Okune, University of California - Irvine