Below are some pieces I have written for academic and popular audiences.
Shorter Essays
“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. (w/ Emma Park).
Scholarly Articles
“Uhuru Sasa! Federal Futures & Liminal Sovereignty in Decolonizing East Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society & History 65(2) (2023)
“Capitalizing Africa: High Finance from Below,” Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 92(4) (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)
Kevin P. Donovan 