INFOSOC studies the lives and work of a group of East Africans who I call ‘information professionals’ – librarians, journalists, broadcasters, technicians – working in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The research undertaken serves as a route towards a better understanding of how the contemporary information society (as a concept and a lived reality) emerged in a setting of unequal global structures during the second half of the twentieth century. Information talk had high stakes in post-independence East Africa: discussing what ‘information’ meant, how to manage it, and how to gain from it was central to debates across many levels of society concerning expectations of independence and the role of the region in the precarious Cold War global order.
During the 1970s, a group of non-aligned states, many of which had recently gained formal independence from European colonial powers, called for a ‘New World Information and Communication Order’. The movement’s spokespersons decried the monopolies over flows of news and information enjoyed by the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union, while Western powers accused it of propping up authoritarian regimes. Exciting new research on the topic is demonstrating the nuances, conflicts and significance of the many organisations and initiatives involved, but we still know relatively little about how these debates manifested outside of international conference halls.
Focusing on professional lives, particularly training programmes, is a one way to understand the broader dynamics at play. Through a series of case studies using archives in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, this project will ask how East African information professionals contributed to the codification of information in disciplines like Mass Communication and Information Science, how they sought leverage between national, regional (East African), and international organisations, and how they understood their work in relation to global information politics.
