Crafting Policy Technologies (PolicyTechs): An Introduction to Policy Digitalisation Pathways in Africa

Abstract

Modern technologies have become critical in transforming Africa’s governing systems in recent decades. Yet, despite the burgeoning studies and reports, we have a few collective works on how these transformations relate to political action (public policy) or cross-cutting analyses of how they change African countries’ complex policy systems. Extant studies are further sprinkled all over, generating different streams or pathways of technological policy innovations that remain highly unintegrated and confined within different disciplines, organisations and professions. This volume assembles predominantly African and multidisciplinary authorship to empirically understand the opportunities and challenges in Africa’s public interest-driven technological and public policy transformations. It fills a critical void in evaluating African countries’ tremendously changing policy systems due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Particular attention is on the interfaces between technological transformations and public policy while considering African countries’ broader governance or political contexts. This chapter introduces this volume. It identifies the nature of these technological adaptations with a primary focus on how public interest technologies like FinTechs, CivicTechs and GovTechs have been leveraged as Policy Technologies (PolicyTechs) and how their adaptations relate to policy entrepreneurship, policy instrumentation and citizen participation. It also provides an overview of the book’s chapters.