Earth Observation and the New African Rural Datascapes: Defining an Agenda for Critical Research

TL;DR

This paper critically examines how Earth Observation data impacts African rural landscapes, emphasizing socio-political dynamics, power relations, and inequalities, and proposes a new framework for research in this area.

Contribution

It identifies neglected areas in EO-for-development research and introduces a framework grounded in critical data studies, ICT4D, and political ecology.

Findings

EO data deployment is influenced by socio-political imaginaries.

Power dynamics shape the distribution of EO data benefits and costs.

Political and local inequalities affect the resilience of marginalized communities.

Abstract

The increasing availability of Earth Observation data could transform the use and governance of African rural landscapes, with major implications for the livelihoods and wellbeing of people living in those landscapes. Recent years have seen a rapid increase in the development of EO data applications targeted at stakeholders in African agricultural systems. But there is still relatively little critical scholarship questioning how EO data are accessed, presented, disseminated and used in different socio-political contexts, or of whether this increases or decreases the wellbeing of poorer and marginalized peoples. We highlight three neglected areas in existing EO-for-development research: (i) the imaginaries of 'ideal' future landscapes informing deployments of EO data; (ii) how power relationships in larger EO-for-development networks shape the distribution of costs and benefits; and (iii) how these larger-scale political dynamics interact with local-scale inequalities to influence the resilience of marginalised peoples. We then propose a framework for critical EO-for-development research drawing on recent thinking in critical data studies, ICT4D and political ecology.