Invisible Users―Youth in the Internet Cafes of Urban Ghana

The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafes of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly notmembers of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters acrossdistance and amass foreign ties--activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educatedclasses. The Internet, accessed on second-hand computers (castoffs from the United States andEurope), has become for these youths a means of enacting a more cosmopolitan self. InInvisible Users, Jenna Burrell offers a richly observed account of how theseInternet enthusiasts have adopted, and adapted to their own priorities, a technological system thatwas not designed with them in mind. Burrell describes the material space of the urban Internet cafeand the virtual space of push and pull between young Ghanaians and the foreigners they encounteronline; the region's famous 419 scam strategies and the rumors of "big gains" that fuelthem; the influential role of churches and theories about how the supernatural operates through thenetwork; and development rhetoric about digital technologies and the future viability of AfricanInternet cafes in the region. Burrell, integrating concepts from science and technology studies andAfrican studies with empirical findings from her own field work in Ghana, captures the interpretiveflexibility of technology by users in the margins but also highlights how their invisibility putslimits on their full inclusion into a global network society.

Jenna Burrell is Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley