[SIGCIS-Members] So.hist.Info Seminar : Anna Katharina Osterlow (CERI, Paris) - Training “The African vanguard of the computer age”

[Camille Paloque-Bergès]

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to the next session of the Socio-History of
Informatics Seminar 2025-2026.

This sixth and penultimate session of the 2025–2026 season will host:

*April 13, 3:00–5:00 pm*
*Anna Katharina Osterlow (Centre for History at Sciences Po / CERI, Paris)*
for a presentation entitled:
*Training “The African vanguard of the computer age”: early computing and
visions of modernity and independence in Senegal and Nigeria, 1963-1984*

The seminar will be held in *hybrid format* at *UTC-Paris, 62 boulevard
Sébastopol – 75003 Paris* (Salle Danielle Quarante [IMI/IMI-QUARAN]). A
connection link and the room number will be posted on this page before the
event. To attend the seminar, please *register here
<https://framaforms.org/inscription-seminaire-de-socio-histoire-de-linformatique-1757664332>*
*.*

*Training “The African vanguard of the computer age”: early computing and
visions of modernity and independence in Senegal and Nigeria, 1963-1984*

In March 1982, an ambitious, transnational group of teachers, scientists,
and computer experts from Senegal, France, and the United States launched
the project “Computers in education” at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in
Dakar, Senegal, to explore the usage of micro-computers in teaching and
learning. The exchanges within the transnational network of experts around
this project raised questions about the “Westernness” of technology, the
appropriate ways to spread computing knowledge adapted to Senegalese
culture, and the conditions of exporting computer hardware from the Global
North to the Global South. Similar questions were raised in a much earlier
computer project in 1964 in Nigeria, where International Business Machines
(IBM) established the “African Education Centre”, in cooperation with the
University of Ibadan, to train students from different African countries on
an IBM punch card computer. While evoking similar questions on modernity
and computing, this project brought forward Nigerian aspirations of linking
computing with the efforts of nation-building and decolonisation, and it
was announced as a symbol for the path that the African continent would
take. Considering the changing practices of computing over the years, my
research investigates the entanglements between French and US American
state and private actors with African academics, functionaries, teachers,
and computer scientists, from the 1960s to the late 1980s, in their
ambitions to spread computing. Thereby, my research intends to shed light
on the “silence” surrounding African computing history and its embeddedness
in the global dynamics of decolonisation and the Cold War. My research is
based on archival materials from archives in France, Senegal, Nigeria, and
the US

The *So.Hist-Info seminar* is coordinated by* Mathilde Fichen, Camille
Paloque-Bergès & Adrien Tournier (HT2S lab Cnam, Paris) and Léandre Bécard
(COSTECH, UTC, Compiègne). *Please note that this will be the first session
organized with our new co-coordinator, L. Bécard.

More info on the seminar :

https://sohistinfo.github.io/

https://technique-societe.cnam.fr/seminaire-socio-histoire-de-l-informatique-1490565.kjsp

Link to the online announcement :
https://technique-societe.cnam.fr/anna-katharina-osterlow-training-the-african-vanguard-of-the-computer-age-early-computing-and-visions-of-modernity-and-independence-in-senegal-and-nigeria-1963-1984-1605532.kjsp
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