The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa: the Relationship Between Funding, Capacity and Research Community in a Nascent Field

Minerva https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-017-9341-1

The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa: The Relationship Between Funding, Capacity and Research Community in a Nascent Field

1 1 2 Matthew Harsh • Ravtosh Bal • Jameson Wetmore • 2 3 G. Pascal Zachary • Kerry Holden

Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract The emergence of vibrant research communities of computer scientists in Kenya and Uganda has occurred in the context of neoliberal privatization, commercialization, and transnational capital flows from donors and corporations. We explore how this funding environment configures research culture and research practices, which are conceptualized as two main components of a research community. Data come from a three-year longitudinal study utilizing interview, ethnographic and survey data collected in Nairobi and Kampala. We document how administrators shape research culture by building academic programs and training growing numbers of PhDs, and analyze how this is linked to complicated interactions between political economy, the epistemic nature of computer science and sociocultural factors like entrepreneurial leadership of key actors and distinctive cultures of innovation. In a donor-driven funding environment, research practice involves scientists constructing their own localized research priorities by adopting distinctive professional identities and creatively structuring projects. The neoliberal political economic context thus clearly influenced research communities, but did not debilitate computing research capacity nor leave researchers without any agency to carry out research programs. The cases illustrate how sites of knowledge production in Africa can gain some measure of research autonomy, some degree of global competency in a central arena of scientific and technological activity, and some expression of their regional cultural priorities and aspirations. Furthermore, the

& Matthew Harsh [email protected]

1 Centre for Engineering in Society, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd., EV- 2.257, Montreal, QC H3G 1M8, Canada 2 School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, Interdisciplinary B 278, 1120 Cady Mall, Tempe, AZ 85287-5603, USA 3 School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, Geography Building, Room 106, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK 123 M. Harsh et al. cases suggest that social analysts must balance structure with culture, place and agency in their approaches to understanding how funding and political economy shape scientiﬁc knowledge.

Keywords Computer science Á Research funding Á Research community Á Kenya Á Uganda

Introduction

Since the year 2000, the field of computer science has grown rapidly in Kenya and Uganda. This emergence of a novel field in sub-Saharan Africa – a region of the world that is not normally associated with robust research communities1 – has been funded almost entirely from international sources: multi- and bi-lateral development donors, philanthropic foundations, and transnational corporations. Unlike in Europe and North America, the state and national private sector provide very little funding for research in sub-Saharan Africa (NPCA 2014). At the same time, the rise of computing research in East Africa has been shaped by trends that are affecting science globally, such as the privatization and commercialization of higher education and research sectors, and the increase of contractual and project-based research (Frickel and Moore 2006). This paper examines how this dynamic research funding environment configures computer science research communities in Kenya and Uganda. In doing so, we hope to contribute to the renewed focus on the political economic and institutional contexts of knowledge production seen in recent science studies and science policy scholarship (as this special issue illustrates). By providing a case study from East Africa, we hope to deepen the understanding of the relationship between funding and science globally. We also aim to help address the general gap in the literature on social analyses of science in Africa. We use the term ‘research community’ to describe what Merz and Sormani (2016) refer to as ‘‘local configurations of novel research fields’’ (p. 2) which empirically consist of connections between researchers (and closely related actors) and institutions and organizations involved in knowledge production. The analytical strength of Merz and Sormani’s specific approach is that it balances scale and place. Institutions and organizations involved in research (computer science in East Africa in our case) connect the global and local, yet analysis is rooted in specific places (the cities of Nairobi and Kampala for us). In a complementary analytical move, our use of research community brings together other approaches to understanding the growth and development of science that balance organizational/institutional/ structural issues with agency and actor-orientation. The notion of research community thus draws on Gla¨ser (2001) concept of scientific community, which understands actors as connected through knowledge making and influenced by the formal and informal institutions involved in research, and Shrum’s (1984) notion of

1 The African Union’s share of the world’s total research output in the period 2005–2010 was only 1.8% (NPCA 2014). South Africa is an exception and does have many strong and established research communities. 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa technical systems, which highlights the ‘matrix of institutions’ that surround science, including state and organizational concerns. Shrum’s (2000, 2005) later work on science in Africa explicitly balances structure with agency, drawing attention to how African researchers can gain some agency by negotiating a common identity with donors in distant geographical locations, which allows resources to be transferred and research to happen. Pickering (1992) and the application of his work by Merz and Sormani (2016) provides a framework to understand how research communities come to be and operate. Pickering sees scientific culture as a ‘‘field of resources that scientific practice operates in and on’’ (1992, p. 2). Thus if we are interested in how funding configures research communities, we must explore how funding shapes culture (the field of resources) and how it shapes practice. We construe resources broadly as the ‘things needed to get science done.’ This can be equipment/infrastructure, buildings, trained scientists, and academic programs (which bring graduate students to help carry out research). Both Pickering (1992) and Shrum (1984) also draw our attention to how epistemic qualities influence the field of resources and practices or ‘acts of making.’ The broader epistemic qualities of a field interact with a specific context to dynamically condition research cultures and practices. We begin the article by presenting a more detailed framework for understanding the relationship between funding and research communities. This resulted from an iterative interaction between our data and literature during analysis. Next, we briefly discuss our methodology and data sources which are based on the longitudinal collection of ethnographic, interview and survey data. We then present our analysis which is structured as a two-part, causal argument about the relationship between research funding and configuration of computing research community in Kampala and Nairobi. We first focus on the construction of research culture (field of resources) for the computing research communities: how actors and institutions respond to the funding environment to create infrastructure, academic programs, and trained researchers. Then we focus on the practices of researchers within the community: how funding influences scientists as they set their agendas and conduct their research. Through examining computer science in two East African capitals – Kampala, Uganda and Nairobi, Kenya – we demonstrate how the interconnected push for increased privatization and commercialization in the higher education and research sectors and donor-controlled capital are the defining political economic forces structuring the computing research communities in both cities. However, while some have argued that these forces have severely and detrimentally constrained research culture and agency of local researchers (Mamdani 2007), this is not the case for computer science in East Africa. While there are certainly structural constraints, we find that in Nairobi and Kampala, the epistemic qualities of computer science, different commercial environments and different combinations of sociocultural factors – such as creative organizational and institutional strategies, the entrepreneurial leadership of key actors, adoption of flexible professional identities and distinctive cultures of innovation – have allowed computing research cultures to be built and researchers to pursue their own agendas that express their regional aspirations and priorities. Although the resultant shape of computing research community looks different in both cities, the interaction of these 123 M. Harsh et al. epistemic and sociocultural factors with the political economy has led to an overall increased capacity across both countries. We conclude by reflecting on implications for theory and policy.

Framework

The growth of scientific fields in areas outside the centers of global science is an under-researched area in science and technology studies (STS). In recent years, STS scholars have called for a new political sociology of science that strives to revitalize studies into the organizational cultures and political economy of science (Frickel and Moore 2006; Lave et al. 2010; Mirowski 2011; Moore et al. 2011). While much of this work is based in the Global North, we argue that the agenda set out by the new political sociology of science can be extended to new territory, that of East Africa. Despite recent calls for exploring new geographic contexts and studying the local conditions for the emergence of new research fields (Garforth and Stockelova 2012; Merz and Sormani 2016), there is limited empirical work that throws light on the historical trajectories of research in East Africa. Most scholars working in the new political sociology of science argue that neoliberalization represents the erosion of autonomous and self-regulating knowledge communities and the elevation of economized, heavily managed environments (Mirowski 2011; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). The neoliberal policies imposed by multilateral institutions such as the World Bank on the higher education systems in East Africa led to the privatization and commercialization of tertiary education throughout Africa (Bisaso 2010; Mamdani 2007). While some of the measures adopted by public universities during the period of structural adjustment, such as enrolling fee-paying students, did help in diversifying revenue sources, many have argued that the impact of these changes resulted in long term harm to academic quality, intellectual freedom and research capacity (Mamdani 2007; Oketch 2003). These changes in the financing of higher education have been accompanied by a rapid growth of the private higher education sector in response to excess demand created by the increasing numbers of African secondary students wishing to enroll in universities and colleges (Varghese 2004). While neoliberalization has led to state reductions in research funding in North America and Europe, African states have never been able to provide anywhere near the same support to fostering their own national research base. International donors have stepped in to support the increasing demand for higher education, in particular postgraduate education, and have also become a large funder of research. In fact, research funding in East Africa comes primarily from international sources through collaborations and partnerships, especially with overseas-based private foundations (Obamba and Mwema 2009). Often this research funding is funneled through individual research consultancies that undermine the development of institutional capacity (Wight et al. 2014). In addition to neoliberal reforms in the higher education sector and the large presence of donor funding, transnational firms are important non-state actors in Africa due to their economic resources. Studies of innovation systems in Africa 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa

(Muchie et al. 2003) have shown that domestic private firms are not key players. However, the institutional environment, including government policies, plays a vital role in strengthening linkages between research organizations and firms, enabling innovation. We refer to these factors as the commercial environment. We use this term to call attention not only to the actions of firms, but also to government policies to support these firms. To understand the emergence and formation of computing research communities in East Africa, it is important to understand the specific epistemic properties of computer science as a field. Computer science is a mix of principles and practices; it interacts with many other disciplines and is used in many differing contexts (Denning 2003; Rosenbloom 2004). It also has a low resource intensity and is scalable. As such, research projects can easily grow or shrink, adapting to changes in personnel or funding. Together, the broad topic areas and wide-ranging applications of computer research, as well as its low resource requirements and its scalability, make the epistemic properties of computing knowledge resonant with the restrictive funding environment of East Africa and with socio-cultural factors explored below. The importance of the socio-cultural environment for innovative activity has been stressed by regional economic development scholars (Aydalot 1986). However, existing theories do not address the relationship between culture and innovation in the African context. As Marchant (2015)arguesforthecaseof Kenya, ‘‘it is impossible to understand the current state of technology innovation in Kenya without incorporating into our theories both the impact of foreign actors with economic capital as well as the inclusion of innovations with a social impact objective in addition to an economic one’’ (p. 17). This latter suggestion (innovations with a local impact) resonates with work in STS that connects users and citizens to research and technoscience to align technoscientific enterprises with local needs (Kuznetsov 2013;Paulos2009). While not rooted in Africa, this work from STS does flag that it is important for our case study to pay attention to how cultures of innovation and users can shape research capacity and practices. While many of the political economic factors discussed earlier impact institutions and thus the research culture (field of resources), socio-cultural factors also shape research culture. One of these is the role played by charismatic actors who, by aligning their interests with those of the institutions, can mobilize resources and put into play strategies that lead to new programs and partnerships (Robinson et al. 2016). Institutional changes ‘‘arise when organized actors with sufficient resources (institutional entrepreneurs) see in them an opportunity to realize an interest that they value highly’’ (DiMaggio 1988: 14). While institutional entrepreneurship helps us understand the agency of organizational actors, we need to understand the agency of individual researchers in order to examine how funding configures research practices, like agenda setting and the processes of research. Luukkonen and Thomas (2016) introduce the concept of ‘negotiated space’ to describe researchers’ attempts to balance their own agency and autonomy in the selection and conduct of research with the control exercised by university policies and external research funding agencies. Shrum’s concept of 123 M. Harsh et al.

‘reagency’ or ‘‘a contingent reaction between identities,’’ acknowledges that resources for research in Africa often come from abroad (2005: 273). Actors are seen as reagents, capable of instigating and inﬂuencing but not controlling interactions. Where actors can negotiate around some sort of common identity, resources are able to be transferred from donors to researchers. Resources can also be ‘re-directed’ to fund priorities of local actors that might be somewhat different than those of the donor (Shrum 2005). Laudel (2006) refers to similar strategies as ‘bootlegging,’ when researchers who want to pursue new lines of research which they think may not be fundable ‘rearrange’ funds from their externally funded projects to pursue this research. With the exception of Shrum (2005), this body of work examining researcher agency within changing political economic structures has been explored and usefully theorized solely in the context of the Global North, despite calls for more comparative analyses across different settings (Gla¨ser 2012). Our framework is summarized in Fig. 1 and shows how the various bodies of literature reviewed here allow us to examine the interplay of structural factors, epistemic characteristics and social dynamics to understand the conﬁguration of research communities in East Africa.

Data and Methods

This research is part of a larger project on the emergence of computer science in East Africa that focused on how capacity and careers are being built using a longitudinal approach that combines qualitative and quantitative data. After a pilot study conducted over two years (2012–2013), we conducted primary research in Kenya and Uganda over a span of an additional three years (2014–2016). The data sources include a survey, semi-structured interviews and video ethnography. Where we can, we also draw on the limited secondary data from published reports about science and technology indicators in Africa. Over 75 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with computer science researchers, government policymakers, and representatives from donors, private companies and innovation hubs in Kampala and Nairobi during the three- year period.2 An online survey of computer science researchers and graduate students provided 33 complete surveys of computer scientists with or pursuing PhDs. These are used as a complement to our detailed interview data and are useful as a means of triangulation. We also conducted video ethnography of events and everyday interactions between researchers and other actors such as students and community organizations to provide richer interactive data (Harsh et al. 2010).

2 We use the real names of respondents where we have permission to do so. Many respondents speciﬁcally requested that we use their names in order to make more people aware of their work. Some quotations were anonymized to protect respondents from any possible harm. 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa

Fig. 1 Framework for understanding the relationship between research funding and conﬁguration of research communities

123 M. Harsh et al.

Constructing Computing Research Cultures

The challenges in research funding and in the higher education landscape discussed above set out the local context for computer science in Kampala and Nairobi. In this section, we analyze how the interactions of institutions and key actors working within that context resulted in Kampala and Nairobi becoming centers of computing research. In both cities, the epistemic properties of computing research combined with certain social and cultural factors which led to the establishment of computing research cultures that support research. However, they were not altogether the same factors and they reacted with political economic structures in different ways. This has resulted in a different conﬁguration of computing research community in the two cities.

Computing Research Culture in Kampala

Computer science research in Kampala is concentrated at a single institution: Makerere University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Africa. To understand how a culture to support signiﬁcant research has been formed in the last 15 years, one must understand the interaction of two central political economic factors – the commercialization of higher education and donor-driven support – along with the leadership of a few key actors. These key actors creatively restructured organizations within these economic changes, resulting in the creation of academic programs, new administrative structures, and 26 trained PhDs.

Liberalization of Higher Education and Funding

State funding for research and development (R&D) in Uganda is very limited. Uganda spent 0.43% of GDP on R&D in 2010 as compared with Kenya’s spending of 0.78% of GDP (WDI Indicators, World Bank). While these numbers are not incredibly high, were it not for funds from foreign institutions, they would be significantly lower. 47.1% of Uganda’s R&D comes from outside the country (NPCA 2014). In this context, a key political economic factor for computing research was the neoliberal reform of Makerere University by the Ugandan Government. Beginning in 1991, Makerere began to recruit self-sponsored students in addition to its normal government-funded students (Bisaso 2010). One of the university administration’s most important strategies for doing this was to encourage departments to create new academic programs specifically designed for self-funded students. As an entice- ment, departments were allowed to keep more than 60% of the revenues that these programs brought in (Mayanja 2001). The other key political economic factor for computing research in Uganda was direct donor support for human capacity building and infrastructure. As the University was being commercialized in the 1990s, Makerere, like many other African universities, received significant bi-lateral support for human capacity

123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa building. This was partly to help universities recover from decreasing public funds due to neoliberal reform in the post-Amin era.

Commercial Environment

Uganda’s private sector is becoming an important actor in funding computing research. The African Innovation Outlook survey (NPCA 2014), as well as the data we have collected, show that Ugandan companies fund more research than Kenyan companies (across all research domains, not just computing research). When discussing the relationship between the private sector and computing research at Makerere, one faculty member states: The companies… have been at the forefront of supporting us. We have had much more traction with them than with more traditional more academic funding places. I think that [for] companies, these are markets that they are actively trying to get into and they have more of an understanding of what is going on. (John Quinn, interview, June 5, 2014) In addition to funding, local companies have also worked with the university to train students and collaborate on projects such as digitizing content, building web projects, and developing software (Hugh Cameron, interview, June 10, 2015). Despite this general support from the private sector, our research did not reveal any formal partnerships between firms and Makerere’s School of Computing and Informatics Technology (CIT). As will be seen below, this is in stark contrast to Nairobi. Rather than actively directing the growth and interactions within this sector, the Ugandan government has adopted a more passive role. Policy documents set forth a set of broad strategies to strengthen R&D capacity including increasing the budgetary allocations for the information technology (IT) sector. Despite the official articulation of these strategies, none of the computing researchers we interviewed mentioned that the government’s strategies were having direct effects to bolster ties with industry or on computing research in general. However, researchers do benefit from infrastructure that the government and private companies have worked to provide, mainly relatively high-bandwidth internet access. Almost all computer researchers at Makerere access the internet not through connections provided by the university, rather through mobile connections, mostly via the most popular company, MTN. MTN in turn has benefited from the establishment of high bandwidth undersea cables coming to East Africa, which Uganda Telecom Limited helped to facilitate.

Cultures of Innovation

We did not ﬁnd evidence of a strong Do It Yourself (DIY) or user-centered culture of computer science or IT innovation in Kampala. This again is in stark contrast to Nairobi, as explored later on.

123 M. Harsh et al.

Institutional Entrepreneurship

The privatization of higher education and donor funding set the stage for the entrance of Venansius Baryamureeba (known as Barya), a computer scientist who was a key driving force behind Makerere’s growth of computing research culture. Barya started at Makerere in 1994 as a Teaching Assistant in the Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics. Intent on obtaining a PhD in computer science, he went to the University of Bergen in Norway. Upon completing his PhD in 2001, he was appointed as lecturer and director of what was then the Institute of Computer Science at Makerere. At that time, the institute consisted of two small rooms: a director’s office and a computer lab. It had about 25 students pursuing a certificate program and less than 10 teaching staff, with Barya as the only PhD holder (Baryamureeba 2015; Venansius Baryamureeba, workshop, June 1–2, 2016; Paul Bagyenda, workshop, June 1–2, 2016). Barya embraced the trend of commercialization being encouraged by the university administration. He started a successful fee-paying undergraduate program in computer science, using the income it generated to create a series of new academic programs. By 2009 the unit had increased exponentially in size, with over 6,000 students. The revenues gained from fee paying students – more than 60% of which, as mentioned above, went back to individual departments – helped Barya employ over 100 staff. The College of Computing and Information Sciences was formed in 2010, and Barya become the Principal (Baryamureeba 2015; Venanasius Baryamureeba, workshop, June 1–2, 2016). To accomplish all of this, Barya often had to engage in serious negotiations with the university administration to convince them to change policies or create new policies. For instance, at one point Barya wanted to hire a PhD student as a lecturer, but university policy prohibited anyone with only a Master’s degree from holding that position. He convinced the university to change the policy and today the School uses lecturers with only Master’s degrees to help teach the vast number of undergraduates in its programs. Barya would later proudly explain that he was able to get that policy changed in 10 days (Venansius Baryamureeba, workshop, June 1–2, 2016). In addition to negotiating with university administrators, Barya’s entrepreneurial leadership was a critical factor for influencing at least three other key groups of actors. The first were foreign donors. The Dutch government supported so-called ‘sandwich programs’ where Ugandan PhD students would be supervised by computer scientists at Dutch universities and would split their time between Dutch universities and Makerere and receive their degrees from the Dutch universities (NUFFIC 2008). For this program to go forward, Barya drew on the financial independence he already achieved through commercialization, and convinced both the administration and the Dutch to give the resources to support PhD students directly to his unit, thereby skirting the university administration. This gave Barya more direct control of the donor funds, and put the donors’ minds at ease that money would not be misallocated due to any possible corruption at the university level. To date, 26 PhD students have been trained through this program, and roughly half are women. And perhaps more importantly, some of the current students being trained 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa are the second academic generation, being jointly supervised by faculty who were in the first cohort of sandwich students and computer scientists in the Netherlands. The Dutch were not the only donors involved in building computing research cultures at Makerere. Especially in terms of infrastructure, the Norwegian government played a key role. Through Barya’s coordination, Norway paid for the construction of a new building to house the growing computing department (Baryamureeba 2015). Reflecting on his role in both human capacity and infrastructure development, Barya emphasizes his direct role and perseverance: Because when I was at Makerere I told people we can build a state of the art computing faculty, people said no. But where is the money? Where are the students? And I continued pushing. At the end of the day, we had a good facility; we had staff trained. When we started training people in computer science, they were saying you cannot train more than five people in computer science and retain them. I can tell you more than 98% have stayed in the country. They maybe changed institutions, but they have stayed. They said you can’t and I said I will. They said you can’t. I said I will. I made it happen. (Venansius Baryamureeba, interview, May 31, 2014). The second group of actors that Barya enrolled into his vision for computer science were academics from the Global North. Perhaps the most significant case was a British computer scientist named John Quinn. Upon graduating with a PhD in computer science from University of Edinburgh in 2007, Quinn contacted one of the authors (Zachary) and stated he was interested in pursuing an academic career in computer science in Africa. Zachary recommended Makerere University and introduced Quinn to Barya. According to Quinn, things moved quickly because of Barya’s leadership and influence in the university: ‘‘And you know Barya, he is so convincing within forty-eight hours of talking to him, I had a flight booked and a job’’ (John Quinn, workshop, June 1–2, 2016). Given his financial independence and influence, Barya was able to pay Quinn a competitive salary, the equivalent of a postdoctoral salary in the UK (Zachary 2011). At Makerere University, Quinn became somewhat of an entrepreneurial leader himself, training graduate students and building a lab that focuses on artificial intelligence and data sciences (Ernest Mwebaze, workshop, June 1–2, 2016). Thirdly, Barya had to convince the Ugandan PhD students themselves. While the opportunity to study abroad may sound exciting, many of our respondents reported that it proved daunting and difficult, especially for the many graduate students who had families and other commitments in Uganda. Barya’s keen salesmanship came to bear on the decision many took to travel to Europe – often in winter months – to receive training. While he promised a stable job in an exciting new area of research at an established university, Barya’s eye was also focused on the tacit skills and knowledge that these PhD students would be exposed to and ultimately bring back to programs at Makerere. The number of students graduating with a PhD from CIT represents something of a phenomenon. No university outside of South Africa can boast the same number of PhD computer science graduates. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the computing research culture in Kampala outside of Makerere University is also linked to Barya and again to trends in privatization. 123 M. Harsh et al.

After rising all the way to Vice Chancellor of the university, Barya eventually founded his own private university in 2012, the Uganda Technology and Management University (UTAMU) which also conducts teaching and research in computer science. In sum, Kampala’s computer science culture was largely nurtured by Barya and other key actors who used their leadership to create new academic programs. They capitalized on the opportunities offered by an atmosphere focused on commercialization and donor-driven funding to restructure university departments and build up a critical mass. University and donor policies enabled Barya to directly control much of the funding coming from private students and donors, which in turn supported the development of research careers and the hiring of more lecturers. Overall, these efforts resulted in building up Kampala as a place with an impressive number of skilled researchers who have created and sustained a vibrant and robust computer science base.

Computing Research Culture in Nairobi

Computing research in Nairobi is more distributed than in Uganda, spread across many public and private universities, labs and hubs. This is the result of political economic and sociocultural factors interacting in different ways.

Liberalization of Higher Education and Funding

Similar to Uganda, Kenya spends less than 1% of GDP on R&D (WDI Indicators, World Bank). Also similar to Uganda, much of the funding for research comes from donors. 57.3% of Kenya’s R&D comes from outside the country (NPCA 2014). As in Kampala, neoliberal reforms and increased demand for education are key factors that shape the political economic context for computer science research in Nairobi. The School of Computing and Informatics (SCI) at the University of Nairobi (UoN), created in 1969, is the oldest and still strongest computing department in Kenya3. In 1998, it was restructured in response to neoliberal reforms, creating a private fee-paying track for students in addition to the public track (similar to what Makerere University did a few years earlier). Government funding to UoN to hire new lecturers has not kept pace with increased demand from population growth and as a result of the government’s 2003 universal primary education policy. SCI has felt these pains more acutely because of the popularity of their majors. At one point, the waiting period for a student to start a Bachelor’s degree in computer science was 18 months (William Okelo-Odongo, interview, June 30, 2015). As a result of these constraints, many faculty have to teach large numbers of courses. Almost all of the respondents from SCI cited heavy teaching loads as a main hindrance to research in interviews and our survey. Computer science in Nairobi has been highly dependent on donor capital for building capacity, as one university administrator put it: ‘‘There is a major issue of

3 There are three universities in Nairobi with PhD programs and four universities with Master’s programs in computer science. 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa funding because here in Kenya there is limited source of funding, very, very limited. So we are all the time looking for opportunities for international institutions to help fund the PhD programs and also linkages with universities worldwide’’ (Joseph Sevilla, interview, June 19, 2015). Like the Dutch program at Makerere, Belgium supported UoN in capacity building. Since 1999, the initiative has trained approximately seven PhDs as well as helped build infrastructure. The main difference between this program and the Dutch program in Uganda was that the PhD degrees for the Kenyan graduates came from University of Nairobi, and not from European universities (William Okelo-Odongo, interview, June 30, 2015). Most of the PhD students were already lecturers at SCI and most remained at SCI after completing their degrees. The growth of private universities in Kenya is also an important factor for computing research in Nairobi. The key case in point is Strathmore University, a young, private university that has quickly garnered a reputation for research and teaching in computing and information technology. Strathmore University, however, also illustrates a way that the political economic context for computing research in Nairobi is somewhat different from computing in Kampala and other areas of research in Kenya. Because of the close connections between computing and IT applications, computing research in Nairobi has become tied to more recent manifestations of neoliberalism, namely, a focus on innovation, entrepreneurship, and spin-off businesses as often seen in the Global North. Strathmore University, for instance, created a research and innovation hub for computing and information technology in 2011 called @iLab. @iLab, a semi-independent unit within the Faculty of Information Technology, can be seen as an East African example of the new forms of R&D enterprise highlighted by the new political sociology of science (Mirowski 2011). To fund its operations and create time and money for faculty members to conduct research, @iLab conducts commercial consultancy work in IT. Perhaps ironically, this is creating a situation where Kenyans are using their expertise to solve the problems of people in the developed world. For instance, one @iLab project is designing IT systems for an elderly home in Australia (the very concept of an elderly home was totally foreign to the @iLab staff member in charge of this program). Strathmore also created @iBiz, the business incubator division of @iLab that is designed to mentor students as they start businesses based on their undergraduate or Master’s work. In addition to commercial consultancies, @iLab conducts research for major international donors.

Commercial Environment

Other characteristics of @iLab illustrate the additional key aspects of political economy of computing research in Nairobi, namely, ties to the private sector and an endorsement from the government. Through @iLab, Strathmore offers an MSc in Mobile Telecommunications that is sponsored by Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile phone company. To date about 120 students have completed this Master’s program, dubbed the Safaricom Academy. Being a corporate sponsored MSc within

123 M. Harsh et al. a university has led to a unique design. In order to graduate, students must create a functioning mobile phone application as well as write a Master’s thesis that addresses research methodology and information or computing theory relevant to their app. Google, IBM and Samsung are among the many multinational corporations that have supported @iLab. Indicating the close relationship between Strathmore and business, high level representatives from all of these companies were present at the official launch of @iLab, including the CEO of Safaricom who made the following statement at the launch: [T]hese two labs [@iLab and @iBiz] have been set up to further spur technological innovation and abet the quantum leap that ICT [information communication technology] has brought to financial inclusion, to education, to commerce and job creation in Kenya. And this is the reason why we have invested at Safaricom - sometimes I forget myself whether we mean Safaricom or Strathmore - why we’ve invested more than 30 million shillings in these two institutions to educate and nurture innovation and technical skills for young people who will meet the growing demand for services (CEO Safaricom, June 19, 2014). The focus on computer and IT-driven innovation has led to innovation hubs and business incubators like @iLab proliferating across Nairobi, earning Nairobi the moniker of ‘Silicon Savannah’ (Bright 2015). Nairobi has drawn international attention in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship. US President Barack Obama focused on these themes during his 2015 visit to Kenya when he gave an address at the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit while in Nairobi. While @iLab was the first hub attached to a university, it was not the first computing R&D hub in Nairobi. The oldest is iHub, an independent, nonprofit, founded in 2010. iHub started as innovation hub supporting start-up companies, and has branched out into computing research. iHub expanded to fill a space that the universities did not occupy because of a paucity of resources. The research arm of the hub, iHub Research, started in 2010 with a staff of four, all women, thanks to a seed grant from SPIDER (Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions). The latest wave of R&D hub development in Nairobi is driven by the international private sector. Samsung, Philips, Microsoft and Nokia have all created some sort of innovation hub or lab in Nairobi (although Nokia’s research lab is now closed). However, the main player in this arena is clearly IBM. IBM Research Africa opened in Nairobi in 2013. It is the company’s 12th global research lab and the first in Africa. It is located on the campus of Catholic University in Nairobi (a small private university) but its strongest partner has been the Government of Kenya through the Kenyan ICT Authority, which helped fund the establishment of the lab. One of the stated objectives of the lab is to build local human capacity which they do through teaching a class, and hosting interns from ‘‘four of the leading computer science departments – Jomo Kenyatta University, University of Nairobi, Strathmore University and Catholic University’’ which amounted to a cohort of over 20 interns in the summer of 2014 (Eric Mibuari, interview, June 18, 2014). As of 2015, the research lab employed five PhDs, including the lab head. Most of them are recent 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa graduates from their doctoral programs and have had the autonomy to shape their research agendas as the research lab is still establishing itself. The Kenyan government’s support of IBM is an example of how the state is providing the groundwork for computing research. While the government provides very little direct support for computing research at universities, it has invested in infrastructure in a similar way as the Ugandan government, such as working to connect Kenya to undersea, high bandwidth fiber optic cables (Ndemo 2015). However, the Kenyan government has made greater commitment to investing in the IT industry compared to Uganda. The Kenyan state is currently planning an ambitious flagship project called Konzo Tech City, a science and technology park to be developed outside of Nairobi, which is still in early stages of development.

Cultures of Innovation

Our data shows that the growth of computing research in this political economic context – which includes state endorsement, but low state funding; trends towards commercialization, innovation, and entrepreneurship; heavy donor funding; and increasing private sector funding – could not have occurred without certain key sociocultural factors. Many of our respondents working within and outside the universities attributed part of the growth of computing research to a culture of innovation in Nairobi. M-Pesa, the mobile phone based money transfer technology developed in Nairobi, addressed a major socioeconomic need: banking services for the poor. Since its launch in 2007 it has been widely seen as a global success story that put Nairobi on the map as an innovative city.4 In addition, there exists a perception that Kenyans are open to technological change and are early adopters, as explained by a young researcher at IBM Research Africa: I think also there is a cultural or maybe just technology ecosystem vibrancy that Kenya has that some of those other countries may not have. Kenyans are quick to adopt things. Especially where it makes their lives easier. To shop, to move money around, and I think like everywhere, initially there might be mistrusting of technology, but once they see that it works they quickly want to get more and more out of it. So I think there might also be like a cultural aspect to it that I think for example in Southern Africa you don’t have (Eric Mibuari, interview, June 18, 2014). It is not a coincidence that the respondents who remark about this culture of innovation the most tend to be graduate students and young researchers. This culture of innovation is tied to demographics: the hubs and labs of Nairobi are mostly populated by young (university-aged) people.

4 The City Momentum Index (CMI) Study ranked Nairobi 11th out of 120 cities surveyed in 2016 for innovation, livability and capacity to reinvent itself. http://allafrica.com/stories/201601251288.html. 123 M. Harsh et al.

Institutional Entrepreneurship

As in Kampala, another important social factor that led to the increased capacity for computing research in Nairobi is that a few key individuals were able to use their leadership to create institutional change. Although there is no single figure in Nairobi who mirrors the character of Barya at Makerere University, Bitange Ndemo, the former Permanent Secretary of the ICT Ministry and a professor of business at University of Nairobi, has been hugely influential in establishing the infrastructure and environment that has enabled computing research. Ndemo oversaw key events such as: the deal with IBM to bring their research lab to Nairobi; the regulatory frameworks to support M-Pesa, the expansion of the undersea fiber optic cables; and the creation of a new public university focused on computing and IT, Multimedia University. Ndemo illustrates entrepreneurial leadership when he discusses his successes. He first credits overall political will under the previous presidential administration for the successes, but then states: I am not bragging but I would say that the number two thing [second largest success factor] was my appointment- someone who is willing to take risks. Because this would not have happened without the amount of risk that was taken to make it succeed…[I]f you want to succeed in areas like innovation you must be willing to break the law. Not many people can break the law. And for everything that worked, we broke some law. I can say because nobody can arrest me now. And you need a couple of madmen like that to change several other sectors by pushing innovation forward and people are beginning to see the results (Bitange Ndemo, interview, 2015). The discussion of risk-taking resonates with the literature on institutional entrepreneurship (Dorado 2005). Furthermore, it is interesting to note that both Ndemo and Barya are referred to similarly as ‘madmen’ in part because of their willingness to take risks. Joseph Sevilla, the director of Strathmore University’s @iLab, is also an institutional entrepreneur in computing research. When he describes his successes, he highlights the importance of creative organizational restructuring. Sevilla came to Kenya in 1983 and frames his success in establishing @iLab and growing it to a 50? person strong organization in terms of ‘opportunities’ and ‘gaps’: [T]hrough the years we realized that there was a gap in university education and initially we were doing professional training in IT offering diplomas and higher diplomas. When we became a university then we expanded that into degrees in computer science- Master’s and now we are also running PhDs (Joseph Sevilla, interview, June 19, 2015). However, Sevilla had to convince the university administration to create the organizational and institutional structures and the physical infrastructure to fill these gaps to create @iLab. @iLab is an organizational innovation that a small, young and flexible institution like Strathmore University can achieve. University of Nairobi, a much older and larger university, made a similar organizational change, but later than Strathmore. In 2013, UoN created C4DLab (Computing for 123 The Rise of Computing Research in East Africa

Development Lab) following a similar strategy to Strathmore’s @iLab. SCI is also reorganizing its PhD program into a lab-based model, similar to computing departments in the Global North, with four research foci: artiﬁcial intelligence, distributed systems, computer architecture, and information systems. To summarize, in Nairobi, political-economic factors such as commercialization of higher education and growth of entrepreneurship combined with a culture of innovation and enterprise contributed to the creation of a more diverse and dispersed computer science culture than in Kampala. Polices at public universities did not allow for as much direct control of resources from private students by computing departments as seen in Kampala, which led to higher teaching loads. However, unlike in Kampala, industry (national and multinational companies) has played a vital role in developing computing research culture by providing funding, building partnerships with universities, establishing research centers and innovation hubs, and employing graduates of the computer science programs. The existence of a strong start-up culture has played an important role in developing capacity, as has endorsement from the government. Individuals such as Prof. Bitange Ndemo (University of Nairobi) and Dr. Joseph Sevilla (Strathmore University) used their leadership skills and personal qualities to build institutions and establish lasting relationships with other actors in the system.

Research Practice

We now turn from the construction of computing research culture to an examination of research practice within that culture; we explore how funding shapes research topics and content in East Africa. The above analysis of the development of computing research culture in Kampala and Nairobi revealed the dominance of international funding and paucity of national government funding in both cities. In analyzing the practice of research topic selection, we first describe how these forces constrain researchers as they strive to set their agendas. However, we then illustrate the creative social and organizational strategies that actors employ which allow them to pursue research that fits their priorities. Researcher agency is linked to the epistemic properties of computer science and flexibility in terms of professional identity, training, and project design. Thus, we argue that international funding can shape research topics and questions, but through these strategies, researchers can carve out research content that meets their own priorities and addresses local socioeconomic needs.

Research Topics and Donor-Driven Agendas

With approximately half of research funding coming from outside the country, many computing researchers in both Kampala and Nairobi acknowledged that their research topics are clearly inﬂuenced by donor priorities as well as donor perceptions of what local problems are. As one respondent put it, ‘‘Sometimes the donors want to fund something that is not the problem; they only care about their own priorities’’ (anonymous faculty member, Nairobi, interview, June 17, 2014). 123 M. Harsh et al.

Furthermore, there was a sense that larger donors can exert more influence over agendas, especially multilateral organizations. As one respondent stated: Very, very rarely can you form your own agenda. In fact, it is for that reason that I refuse to participate in the EU funding, Horizon 2020, and FP7 before it because largely we are solving European problems…Kenya to solve European problems. I came here to solve our own local problems (Timothy Waema, interview, June 30, 2015). The influence of donors and the pressure to get research grants for promotion and increased income can lead to computing researchers selecting topics that they do not find interesting or novel. [S]o the grant which I actually got is in health…Unfortunately, it is… not applying my personal likes…it is more into innovations in health but which are not really- which I wouldn’t really call innovations. It is what we have all been doing - using mobile phones to submit data to some data center and analyze (Florence Tushabe, interview, June 17, 2015). Here, Tushabe feels the grant does not actually involve new research, it is just a project that delivers a service, namely, health data collection. Tushabe also argues that since funding is largely tied to development goals, it is rare to get money purely for computing research. ‘‘You begin with calls for proposals in your area of expertise, and then you realize that there are very few calls, there are very few calls which need computing research, you find most are for agriculture, for health, for you know, for climate change’’ (Florence Tushabe, interview, May 30, 2014). It is not just development donors that constrain research topics in this way. Priorities of industry can also structure research agendas, especially at a unit like @iLab at Strathmore University in Nairobi where they depend on industry funding to pay staff salaries. I would say a lot of funding we are getting is kind of project oriented… There is innovation and interest in the stuff we can find and publish. But at other times in academia you want to do a certain research which directly or initially might not be, you might not be able to find people in industry that may be interested in funding it. So I think that is a big challenge - how to be able to generate this revenue which can help us … maintain academics doing research in themes that might not seem to be able to raise local or international funds, but whose results will come in, after several years (Joseph Sevilla, interview, June 19, 2015). The notions of project-oriented work mentioned here also connects to another way that the political economy of computing research can restrict topics, that is through consulting or contract research. Because salaries for faculty members are generally too low for them to support a middle class lifestyle, researchers often consult on an individual basis for international organizations, governments, companies or NGOs. Researchers have very little agency when conducting consulting work.

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Donor funding has, to a large extent, led to research that is more applied in nature. The limited government funding is channeled to projects that are oriented to solving challenges in sectors like agriculture and health. Our focus is more on practical or applied research. I mean discussing with colleagues who are from the US or from Europe, you’ve got a lot of sort of theoretical research that takes place there, which is obviously good because they are trying to break into new ground, but in our context I think that we find that we look at doing more applied type of research- what is applicable and what can provide benefits to society at the moment (John Matogo, interview, July 2, 2013). Furthermore, in Kenya, many university researchers are working on topics oriented towards influencing policy, which also moves them away from more theory-driven topics. [F]or me I do not want research for the sake of research. I want research that changes practice. And now I am not interested too much in publications, now I want to influence policy, practice and grow research capacity (Tonny Omwansa, interview, July 3, 2015).

Research Content and Negotiating Agency

Given these constraints, researchers have developed a number of creative strategies and processes in order to pursue their own interests and maintain some control over their research content. We understand these strategies as a way for researchers to acquire some agency (Shrum 2005) and create a negotiated space for their priorities (Luukkonen and Thomas 2016). With researcher strategies, the epistemic properties of computer science are an important factor, as actors exhibit ﬂexibility in terms of identity and roles, training, and project design. A main way that researchers create space for their own research priorities is to become ﬂexible in terms of professional identities, and entrepreneurial in terms of their orientation and willingness to adopt roles beyond that of researcher. For instance, when Kamau Gachigi returned to Nairobi after completing his PhD in the US, he found that he could not conduct his research (which is at the intersection of computer engineering and materials engineering) because of lack of facilities. In order to acquire the facilities he needed to pursue his research agenda, he refashioned himself into an entrepreneur, tapping into Nairobi’s trend towards commercialization of research, and became a main driver behind the University of Nairobi’s Science and Technology Park. Along similar lines, he also molded his professional identity to connect to the global ‘DIY’ or ‘maker’ movement. He founded the FabLab at the University of Nairobi which is a part of the global network of engineering and innovation spaces started at MIT. From the theoretical viewpoint of reagency (Shrum 2005), this was a negotiation between actors (Gachigi and MIT) to form a common identity: an engineer at a Kenyan university with scarce technical infrastructure (compared to the US), and ‘makers’ in the US share a DIY or ‘make do’ identity. The negotiation results in

123 M. Harsh et al. resources flowing into Kenya and gives Gachigi some agency to pursue his research agenda. He argues that: It forces you if you want to continue to be active in your field to start creating the space. In other words, opening it up, trying to see if you can get funding for equipment, stuff like that. So it is a function of the point in our technological development that we are, that people like myself who end up having to do a lot of things… if you don’t, then you find yourself unable to use what your skills are about (Kamau Gachigi, interview, July 3, 2015) In doing ‘a lot of things’ Gachigi is ‘creating the space’ in two connected senses: physical space (FabLab and the S&T park) and social space to pursue his research. A second strategy that researchers use to carve out space for their priorities is creativity and flexibility in training of students, particularly Master’s students. Master’s students often must publish one academic paper before they are eligible to get their PhDs (this is an explicit requirement at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT)), so there is a myriad of small research projects being conducted through these Master’s students every year. Some supervisors use this requirement strategically to have students do bits of research connected to the supervisor’s research interests and projects. As one respondent put it: I need to publish. I need to. But what my strategy is to really work with my students. Yes, I do a lot of research with students, graduate students. So each cohort I pick out three students and work on particular aspects (Agnes Semwanga, interview, June 5, 2014). Supervisors thus further their agendas and build their own careers through their training of students. A final way that researchers can create space for their priorities and acquire some agency is through being flexible about the design of research projects. As mentioned above, much of the research funds available from international donors are tied to development goals or grand challenges (health, agriculture, energy, finance, transport, etc.). Because computing knowledge can support efforts to achieve almost all development goals, computer researchers have some flexibility in terms of which calls for research they respond to, and how they frame their research. Sometimes this can mean working in an application area or development sector that is not the one the researcher would choose if she had total freedom. This flexibility represents an example of what Shrum (2005) refers to as re- direction and what Laudel (2006) refers to as bootlegging, when actors use resources in ways that are not explicitly as planned by donors. For Waweru Mwangi, a computer science researcher at JKUAT, this means seeking development funding in areas like agriculture, and using some of that funding to pursue more fundamental computer research. This strategy requires collaborating with more applied researchers and creatively formulating the funding proposal: Because you know when it is multi-disciplined, then the effect of your own conceptual research is reduced a bit [in the proposal] because what they want

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to hear is how you will use this technology (Waweru Mwangi, interview, July 10, 2014). This re-direction of funds is a common strategy to allow researchers to pursue research questions of interest to them. Some donors may even view the results of this re-direction as positive, especially if other development-oriented goals and deliverables are also accomplished. Overall, we find that researchers can be flexible along these three dimensions – professional identity, training, and project design – and through this flexibility they can negotiate spaces to pursue their desired research content. That is not to say that funding does not influence research. It can make computing research questions less conceptual and more applied, and it can certainly cause computing researchers to change which topic areas (development goals) they work on. Administrators are well aware of these challenges, and have developed some strategies to boost researcher agency and support researchers in setting their own agendas. One such strategy is redistributing revenues gained from consulting or contracting work. As noted above, consulting work does not give researchers much agency in terms of agenda setting. However, when done at an organizational level, it can bring in additional resources to pay staff salaries and to conduct projects where researchers can drive the agenda. @iLab and iHub Research both utilize this strategy. At iHub Research, the goal of consulting work ‘‘is to just work with other people to do their research where we are learning at the same time. And getting extra to do our own research’’ (Shikoh Gitau, interview, July 5, 2012).

Conclusions

Institutional and economic reforms based on a neoliberal policy largely advocated by the World Bank have shaped the research landscape of computer science in Nairobi and Kampala. However, the building of this community is equally shaped by the social relationships between the principal players, visionary leadership, and a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. There are also differences in the way each country responded to these factors. In Kampala, the focus was on a single university that developed its own research culture by training students to be teachers. In Nairobi, a more distributed research culture has developed. Industry plays a major role, business incubators and innovation hubs share space with universities and ﬁrms, and the interaction between them is shaping computer science communities. A common thread uniting the development of computing research cultures in the two cities is the large presence of international funding. Combined with the requirement to undertake research that addresses development challenges, this externally driven system restricts researchers’ autonomy to undertake research topics based on their own research interests. However, in the context of the low resource intensity and broad-application epistemic characteristics of computing knowledge, researchers and administrators have adopted many creative strategies to maintain different levels of control over their own research content.

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While many studies highlight the lack of research capabilities in sub-Saharan Africa, this study of computing research shows that East Africa is a site for scientific knowledge creation. Science policy studies have largely ignored sub-Saharan Africa, or focused only on indigenous knowledge or on subjugation of African researchers and communities through participation in global science (particularly global health). But computer science in Kampala and Nairobi, while still small compared to the Global North, is growing rapidly. This case also shows that while neoliberalism has exerted a strong force on computer science researchers in East Africa, it is not a steamroller, flattening research capacity and crushing researcher autonomy. Individuals and institutions have found techniques that give them some measure of control over their own research. However, that is not to say that neoliberalization is the answer to building research culture. It was not neoliberal policies but contingent and complicated sociocultural factors interacting with political economic context that resulted in this growth of computing research. Therefore, when looking at the factors that shape the emergence of a new research field, one must take a balanced approach looking beyond political economic structures, to epistemology, culture and agency. In some ways, the context of our research – East Africa – promoted this broad view; the lack of specific studies from the region encouraged us to look for tools and insights from many different theoretical perspectives. However, we would argue it is just as important to use this balanced approach when looking at the relationship between research funding and research fields in the United States or Europe, as it is when looking at science in Africa. This study also has implications for research practices. Many of the ad-hoc strategies adopted by individual researchers and administrators may become institutionalized with time, for instance, the growth of collaborations and multidisciplinary research teams. However, the externally driven research system is unlikely to change soon. Donor money, with its own priorities and expectations, will persist. And with it, issues of financial sustainability and continuity of research remain. Thus, developing a sustainable research environment ultimately requires an increase in domestic investment in research, by both government and local business. However, in addition to domestic investment, there is a need to strengthen institutional structures and linkages between organizations. Programs like short- term industrial fellowships for faculty members; industry-sponsored postgraduate studentships; general postdoctoral fellowships/research fellowships (which are very uncommon in East Africa); and regional faculty exchange between African universities could have a large impact in terms of building more capacity, generating more knowledge and better addressing local socioeconomic needs.

Acknowledgments This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1257145. Any opinions, ﬁndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors wish to sincerely thank all of the computing researchers and administrators in East Africa who generously gave their time to participate in this study.

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