Kevin P. Donovan

Below are some pieces I have written for academic and popular audiences.

Book

Money, Value & the State: Sovereignty & Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

• Honorable mention for the 2024-2025 Sharon Stephens Prize, awarded biennially by the American Ethnological Society for a first book. 
• Honorable mention for the 2025 President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association, awarded to the best book by an early career scholar. 

Shorter Essays

“What Does it Take to Topple a Dam?” Boston Review (2025)

“The Politics of Price,” Boston Review (2024).

“Costly Propositions,” New Left Review Sidecar (2023), with Basil Ibrahim.

“Microfinance’s Imagined Utopia,” Boston Review (2023).

“The Future Has Been Colonized: Stuck in the Zero Balance Economy.” Boston Review (2020).

“Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah.” Boston Review (2019), w/ Emma Park.

“Between the Nation and the State.” Limn 7 Public Infrastructures/Infrastructural Publics (2016), w/ Emma Park.

 

Co-edited Collections

“Capitalizing Africa,” Africa 92(4) (2022)

“Surveillance in Africa,” African Studies Review 59(2) (2016)

 

Scholarly Essays

“East African Economies and the Problem of Foreign Exchange,” Journal of Southern African Studies (forthcoming)

• Opening essay for a forum on Money, Value, and the State with contributions by Tinashe Nyamunda, Deborah James, Parker Shipton, Jeremy Jones, Karin Pallaver, Toby Green, Mariusz Lukasiewicz, and a response by me. 

“Disciplining Citizens & Commodities: Economic Crimes & Accusations in 1970s Uganda” The Journal of African History 65(2): 240-258 (2024).

“Privacy, Privation, and Person: Data, Debt, and Infrastructured Personhood,” in Richard Rottenburg et al. (eds.) Translating Technology in Africa, Volume 1: Metrics (Brill, 2024): 55-78. (w/ Emma Park)

“Uhuru Sasa! Federal Futures & Liminal Sovereignty in Decolonizing East Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society & History 65(2): 372–398 (2023)

“Capitalizing Africa: High Finance from Below,” Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 92(4): 540-560 (2022) (w/ James Christopher Mizes)

• Part of a collection we edited, with studies of West Africa’s stock market, banking regulation in Ghana, credit scoring in Togo, foreign exchange markets in Congo, and privatisation in Ethiopia. 

“Knowledge/Seizure: Debt and Data in Kenya’s Zero Balance Economy,” Antipode 54(4) (2022): 1063-1085. (w/ Emma Park) 

“Algorithmic Intimacy: The Data Economy of Predatory Inclusion.” Social Anthropology 30(2) (2022) (w/ Emma Park). (pre-pub PDF)

“Magendo: Arbitrage & Ambiguity on an East African Frontier,” Cultural Anthropology, 36(1): 110-137. (2021) (PDF)

“The Rise of the Randomistas: On the Experimental Turn in Development Aid.” Economy & Society 47(1): 27-58. (2018) (open access version)

“‘Financial Inclusion Means Your Money Isn’t With You’ – The Conflict Over Social Grants and Financial Services in South Africa.” In Bill Maurer, Smoki Musaraj, and Ivan Small (eds.) Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion & Design. Berghahn Books. (2018) (open access version)

“Surveillance in Africa: Politics, Histories, Techniques.” African Studies Review 59(2). (September 2016) (with Philippe M. Frowd and A.K. Martin) (open access version)

• Part of “Surveillance in Africa,” a special forum in African Studies Review 59(2) 2016. Edited with Philippe M. Frowd and A.K. Martin.

“Infrastructuring Aid: Materializing Humanitarianism in Northern Kenya.” Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 33(4): 732-748. (August 2015) (open access version)

• Supplementary photo essay for the Society & Space blog.

“The Biometric Imaginary: Bureaucratic Technopolitics in Post-Apartheid Welfare.” Journal of Southern African Studies 41(4): 815-833. (2015) (open access version)

“New Surveillance Technologies and Their Publics: A Case of Biometrics.” Public Understanding of Science 24(7): 842-857. (October 2015) (with A.K. Martin) (open access version)

“‘Development’ as if We Have Never Been Modern: Fragments of a Latourian Development Studies.” Development & Change 45(5) (September 2014) (open access version)

“The Rise of African SIM Registration: The Emerging Dynamics of Regulatory Change.” First Monday 19, 1-2 (February 2014) (with A.K. Martin)

“Mobile Money, More Freedom? The Impact of M-PESA’s Network Power on Development as Freedom.” International Journal of Communication 6, 2647-2669. (2012)