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There is an increasing uptake of digital technologies across African countries. Public, private, and government services have adopted and utilized digital technologies to improve work processes, productivity, create jobs, and better service delivery. This short paper seeks to answer these questions: What is the current state of digital readiness in African countries? Do existing digital readiness assessment tools, indicators, or metrics, help to assess the digital readiness of countries in Africa? Analysis of publicly available data from Cisco index of readiness score and Broadband speed ranking by cable.co.uk, reveal that: 1) African countries' digital readiness score is below the global average of 11.96, on a scale of 0 to 25 (except Tunisia with readiness average score of 12.05); and 2) African countries' broadband speed is below the global mean speed of 25Mbps (mean speed of 4.51 and 3.80 Mbps for sub‐Saharan Africa and North Africa, respectively). Second, analysis of various assessment tools show that the existing metrics can't be used as is to diagnose and evaluate Africa's digital readiness. Instead factors such as availability of adequate infrastructure; last‐mile connectivity to homes, schools, businesses, and government agencies; and skill gaps should be considered. The implications of this study are to show the need for an appropriate assessment tools so countries in Africa prioritize efforts to embrace digital readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the politics of technological progress as it is being played out among a loose network of Ghanaian makers. It unpacks how the practice of 'making' unfolds as a site for positioning the self and the nation within a global imaginary of techno futures. The paper argues, first, that 'making' in Ghana is emblematic of a crossroads of imaginative possibilities for technological design and production, and second, that this marks a distinct turn in the politics of technological progress, particularly when situated against ongoing econo‐political negotiations between the Global south, the West, and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the results of a systematic review of data use practices by African countries to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) #2 – agriculture. Data use practices and existing data infrastructure are reviewed through the lens of the four big data value‐chain ‐ data generation, data acquisition, data storage, and data analysis. The findings show that – 1) national statistical offices are the primary institutions responsible for data collection and analysis at country level; 2) survey is the primary means for data generation and acquisition; c) the capability to transform data into actionable insight and knowledge is severely limited; 4) data is heavily used for reporting purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]