Telecommunications are an essential part of the global political economy, and the private telecommunications sector is driving much of the transformation across Africa. Yet the regulatory frameworks governing the relationships between African governments and these corporations remain hazy. Focusing on South Africa''s flagship mobile network operators (MNOs), MTN and Vodacom, this open access book provides unique insights into this thin boundary between corporatism and many African states'' global relationships. Drawing on rich archival research, company data, and reports from the South African parliament and Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Odilile uncovers how information and communications technology (ICT) companies have taken advantage of epoch-shifting periods in South Africa''s history, from the end of the Cold War to the end of Apartheid. In so doing, she sheds new light on the wider issues of the politics of the multinational corporation, of foreign investment, and of state-corporation relations across Africa and beyond. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Autorentext
Odilile Ayodele is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Klappentext

"This book critically traces the growth of South African mobile telephony companies MTN and Vodacom on the African continent. The book adopts an interpretive framework, drawing from international relations, area studies and technopolitics, to show how MTN and Vodacom were able to embed themselves in the economic component of South Africa's foreign policy and state apparatuses beyond South Africa's borders"--