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Abstract

Writing about the digitalisation of subnational administrations in Kenya, Datta and Hoefsloot make the case for engaging the temporality of the state as a locus of power and its expression. As a cinematic auteur, they argue, the state times and sequences the asynchronous moments of its action. Building on this insight, the following commentary adds a vectoral dimension to the relationship between time and statecraft: acceleration, or, as physicists would define it, a directional rate of change in speed. Yet acceleration is more than an analytical metaphor: as we argue, it has been a collective grammar through which the Kenyan state itself has been given effect and sense through hastened infrastructural projects in the transition from autocracy and immobility to democracy and (digital) development.

Keywords

Kenya development digitalisation acceleration infrastructure

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An accelerated state

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