Agents of Technology Localization in East Africa: Case Studies of Social Enterprises in Tanzania

Abstract

Technology localization refers to activities that seek to make particular technologies locally functional and locally embedded in order to overcome resistance to their adoption. These activities can be described as diffusion, institutional support, and technical adaptation. In developing societies that face experiences of resistance to technological change, several organizational agents could serve as agents of localization. This paper showcases a number of social enterprises in East Africa – particularly in Tanzania – that are involved in localizing technologies for sustainable energy and agricultural mechanization. Field data were collected between December 2014 and September 2015. Staff, clients and partners of the social enterprises were interviewed. In addition, field observations and a scan of accessible reports and documents of social enterprises and their partner organizations took place. The cases demonstrate technology localization activities and assess the effectiveness of these social enterprises as agents of localization. The study concluded that, given appropriate tools and context, such as engaging early adopters of innovation and staying attuned to feedback from local communities, social enterprises can be effective agents of technology localization.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.