IJPSD

ISSN: 2360-784X

 International Journal of Political Science and Development
 

International Journal of Political Science and Development

Vol. 8(3), pp. 88-120, March, 2020. 

DOI: 10.14662/IJPSD2020.060

ISSN: 2360-784X

Review

Ethnic Construction of Technology

Technics Ikechi Nwosu

The African Science Fiction Project, Owerri, Nigeria. Email: frontpagetechnics@gmail.com

Accepted 9 March 2020

Ethnic construction of technology is an approach to technology starring African ethnic nationalities in the face. This is an approach that demands immediate propagation in African politics. Intelligent ethnicity or positive ethnicity is yet farfetched in Africa’s sociopolitical life. One group is ready to destroy a technoscientific breakthrough achieved by members of another group. The technological artefact will not go through the prototype stage if it is not a product of a member of the ethno-religious group that has the upper hand in the politics of that state. In this way, African countries (which incidentally are multiethnic) suffer from technological backwardness resulting from their own internal sociopolitical controversies. National technological innovation agendas, where conceptualized at all, exist only on paper. Ethnicity and ethnocentrism therefore must be engaged in the social construction of technology theory by Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars to transform same into Africa’s most important field of study in the 21st Century, to hone its political value in the continent as she struggles to initiate a technology manifesto and to end the Third World’s technological dependence on the industrial and super-industrial countries. As a multi-disciplinary field of study, political scientists (especially in Africa) can move STS more away from the neutrality philosophy (something to study) towards the commitment philosophy (something to encourage) to expand and consolidate its political value in third world technology politics. The commitment philosophy of STS if propagated in Africa and the Third World will create STS of technological takeoff which will be the most valuable contribution of STS scholarship in technologically backward countries. Engaging STS of technological takeoff for Africa and the Third World is an important contribution of this research. This paper weaves ethnic construction of technology into the social construction of technology theory and conceptualizes ethnic nationalism or ethnic consciousness as possible ‘momentum accelerator’ in the evolution of technology in African states, drawing on historical evidence of ethnicity as a key driver in the evolution of technology in Europe. The Igbo ethnic group comes into focus as an example of this perception. The Igbo ethnic group made Africa’s first modern technology in the years 1967 to 1970 when that ethnic identity sought to establish the Biafran State – a scientific state that would have triggered the Japanization of Africa within a decade of its establishment. Thus, the Igbo Biafran State initiated the Igbo technoscientific image-identity carried by the people well into the 21st Century, such that they produced the prototype of Africa’s first car (Z600) in 1997 and created a new Physics (Emagnetodynamics) in 2006. Though Emagnetodynamics technology has been patented in about 139 countries including the United States, in the local economy it is unknown and unsung and considered a failed technological artefact along with the Z600. Nigeria’s ethnic politics is a social force at the root of the present condition of these two technological artefacts. The Z600 would have been Africa’s $2000 car affordable by 200 million Africans, and the self-sustaining Emagnetodynamics Machine has the capability to make Africans pay nearly nothing for constant electricity and drive millions of their cars without petrol. These two Igbo inventions would have spawned a thousand other technological inventions, for invention seems to be a marked prowess of the Igbos. Yet ethnicity in Nigeria stands in the way of this immense technological harvest that would have been the lot of Africans, leaving the continent a dumping ground for technological latecomers. Thus, the salience of ethnicity in the social construction of technology theory becomes obvious. Ethnicity first exists as a social phenomenon before it finds expression in the political sphere. Retrogressive ethnicity exists in the Nigerian social sphere in the form of ethno-religious bias; then it is extended to the political front where it re-emerges as ethnic politics in the competition for political power whereby members of one group or allied groups use political power to suppress and destroy technological innovations achieved by some members of the rival groups of a political state. This work belongs to the general category of political impediments to technological development. Using the Igbo experience, this paper argues that Africa’s technological backwardness which has lingered well into the 21st Century is produced by domestic technology politics.