TM: The power of the internet played a big part of the discussion in the various ways through which data is transferred and the potential to transfer it exists. Be it from the Zoom and WhatsApp mentorship groups by Eider Africa or the creation of YouTube videos by the lecturer to make academic material more consumable. The allure of the same is another matter altogether.
PC: One person pointed out that Kenya has the infrastructural capacity (5 tier three data centers; M-Pesa is hosted here; Visa/bank transactions hosted here), but not necessarily the expertise to make full use of that capacity. This, however, is mostly referring to big (quantitative) data storage and analytics. On the qualitative side, some discussion came out in the panel on students… E.g. students didn’t know about the journals, what the journal admissions process looks like, where students could pull data from, where students could store data, or even access to paywalled research. So even if the infrastructure is there, knowledge about the infrastructures or ability to access it might be limited.
AO: We didn’t have enough representation from the technical experts. Perhaps this reflects in some way the focus of much of the tech community in Nairobi on money making ventures or “social good” that doesn’t necessarily touch on more academic/digital humanities things. It was great to have Chao, Flora, Sylvia representing the digital humanities side. Phares Kariuki: “the technical capacity is here.” Perhaps at the level of internet and expertise. But I am not sure at the level of software innovation we have enough diversity of products and innovation happening; the IDRC uses Microsoft Sharepoint; Eider Africa uses Google suite; government officials (and most everyone) uses gmail and google suite. UoN and someone else mentioned using Dspace for their repositories - this is the most common software used. We don't seem to have enough options for the storage of qualitative data - hence people's interest and use of PECE.