Urban studies on housing informality have illustrated how community-led enumerations have catalysed physical upgrading interventions through the generation of data that inform slum upgrading priorities. This paper builds on existing literature, while introducing technology-aided data collection processes to describe a new kind of political agency for young people in slums. This qualitative study utilizes data from the work of Slum Dwellers International (SDI) groups in Harare metropolitan province, Zimbabwe and it highlights how their slum data processes have helped reshape narratives about the urban poor in slums. The findings help to make three arguments. I argue that bottom-up research activities are inherently political processes with huge scope to alter power dynamics in urban development settings. I consider the strategic role of tech-savvy young people from SDI groups to demonstrate the political contributions of slum data processes. Finally, I then caution that tech-aided datafication has the potential to produce unintentional exclusion.
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