Beyond the Benjamins: Toward
an African Interaction Design
N.J. Bidwell
Centre for ICT for Development | [e-mail]
H. Winschiers-Theophilus
Polytechnic of Namibia | [e-mail]
[ 1] Suchman,
L. “Located
Accountabilities in
Technology Production.”
Scandinavian Journal of
Information Systems 14,
2 (2003): 91–105.

January + February 2010

interactions

Localizing interaction design in Africa is criti-
cal for improving usability and user experience
for African populations. Genuine localization, as
Lucy Suchman and others argue, requires locating
accountability in the production of technologies;
for Africa, this means design by Africans in Africa
for African situations [ 1].
However, supporting Africans in developing
and applying the skills they need to localize inter-
action design is a serious issue beleaguered by
paradox. Here we discuss some of the challenges
in building capacity for an African interaction
design by reflecting on our 16 years of combined
experience in teaching HCI, managing computer
science programs in academia, and undertaking
interaction design research in southern Africa.
These challenges are embedded in an array of fac-
tors including: cultural values, which affect both
system usability and learner and teacher behavior;
historical and geographical power relationships;
and socioeconomic issues that both constrain
technology and shape the aspirations of learners
and professionals. These factors have been widely
and deeply discussed independently, but the effect
of their intricate interrelationships on the evolu-
tion of HCI practice in Africa by Africans has not.
To illustrate the effects that emerge from this
mesh of factors, we refer to phenomena that we
routinely encounter in our work, in particular in
Namibia and South Africa.
We seek to depict this reality as a motivation
for establishing new ways to support Africans
in localizing interaction design, but we do not
intend the reader to generalize the details of our
specifically situated examples across the vast and
diverse continent.
Competition for enrolling in information tech-
nology in Southern Africa as part of higher and
tertiary education is often fierce, and with affir-
mative employment policies for Africans (e.g.,
black people in South Africa) or nationals (e.g.,
Namibians in Namibia), there is little shortage of
IT employment for graduates at locally competitive
salaries. For African IT students and graduates, it
is, as one colleague succinctly states, “all about the
Benjamins.” Money is imperative for African stu-
dents, who are often obliged to return the invest-
ment in their education made by extended kin or
by institutional lenders. Economic pragmatism
means that few African IT students undertake
post-graduate studies. This has consequences for
both IT-teacher education and the scope for an
advanced capacity in local HCI research and pro-
fessional practice. There is little payoff in proceed-
ing to post-graduate studies compared with gain-
ing industry certification (e.g., Cisco). For instance,
there are only 10 Namibian nationals with a mas-
ter’s in IT of which only three work in higher edu-
cation and another two with a HCI specialization.