Silicon Elsewhere. Nairobi, Global China and the Promise of Techno-capital
Heralded as Africa's "Silicon Savannah"—a cradle of innovation—Nairobi has become a technology and innovation capital for Kenya and for the continent at large. With a national strategy that has prioritized digital technology for the last two decades, many Chinese digital champions, smaller startups, and investors have since chosen Nairobi as their African landing pad. Moving between leafy coworking spaces and the temperature-controlled rooms of brand-new data centers, Silicon Elsewhere locates Nairobi among the experimental capitals, not peripheries, of technological change in the early twenty-first century.
Author: Andrea Pollio is an Assistant Professor of Economic and Political Geography at the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, and a research associate at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is one of the founding editors of Platforms & Society and a co-curator of UTA-Do—Urban Theory Workshop–Africa. He is the author of Silicon Elsewhere: Nairobi, Global China, and the Promise of Techno-Capital (University of California Press, 2026).
In conversation with the author: Francesca Governa (Polytechnic of Turin), Jack Odeo (University of Stockholm), Jethron Akalah (Maseno University), Elisa Gambino (University of Manchester) Costanza Franceschini (Leiden University)
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