Abstract
This study examined how Chinese ICTs in Zimbabwe could be considered as General-Purpose Technologies or General Platform Technologies (GPTs). GPTs are a class of technologies that induce profound effects on the social and economic life of societies at the national and global level. The study focused on technological diffusion, pervasiveness, and innovation as critical pathways for comprehending Zimbabwe’s development. Zimbabwe has been struggling for over four decades to break free from the Rhodesian dual economic model which relies heavily on the two general “platforms” of mining and agriculture. This dual economic paradigm, being so entrenched, traps the country in a rinse and repeat pattern that is deficient of innovation and competitiveness. I argue that Zimbabwe’s economic future hinges on how far the Rhodesian model is decentred, reconstituted, and supplanted, a process which calls for a “jumpstart” and “catching up”, however uneven. Chinese ICTs could be a gateway to this critical decentring and reconstitution. For that to happen, Chinese ICTs in Zimbabwe need to assume the role of general platforms. The study’s focus allowed for a deeper exploration of the complex relationship between China and Zimbabwe and its significance in geosociotechnopolitics and geosociotechnologies. In the study, which assumed that digital capitalism is transnationalised, the emergence of a multipolar global digital and communications order, and the putative importance of ICT-driven shifts in shaping geopolitical, socio-economic, and developmental discourse, are highlighted. The challenge was to interpret what new technologies signify for existing patterns, systems, paradigms, and standards. Utilising qualitative data from 32 semi-structured interviews with key informants, experts, technocrats, and diplomats, as well as ordinary Zimbabweans who use Chinese ICTs, the study found that Chinese ICTs as GPTs are internationalised and socialised in a “flying geese” formation. Yet, Zimbabwean realities, needs, fears, aspirations, and ambivalences alter such a formation. Moreover, the study identified the notion of “zhing zhong”, ordinarily dismissive, as being constitutive of how Zimbabweans encounter Chinese technological “multipolarity” and complementarities. The study suggests that Zimbabwe’s economic development can benefit from technological complementarities that have their coordinates on the open Digital Silk Road rather than the normative and exclusive Silicon Valley, but without necessarily divesting from the West. These complementarities have a definite “decentring” and restructuring effect. The study concludes that digital technology holds immense developmental promise for Zimbabweans if the “national question” can be re-envisioned in new ways.