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Civic Education for Technological Takeoff: The Child-Author
Development Programme as the Reimagination of African Technological
Citizenship
CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers: No. 2)
Technics Ikechi Nwosu
The African Science Fiction Project / Child-Author Development Programme (CADP)
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.910000691
Received: 04 September 2025; Accepted: 10 September 2025; Published: 21 November 2025
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a pioneering curriculum framework titled Civic Education for Technological Takeoff
(CETT), developed under the Child-Author Development Programme (CADP). CETT reconceptualizes Civic
Education through the lens of African Science Fiction and Technological Nationalism. The initiative integrates
creative writing, speculative futures, and civic consciousness to prepare African children aged 10–18 for
technological citizenship. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS), postcolonial theory, and
African Futurism, CETT positions African children as both subjects and agents of the continent's technological
destiny. This paper introduces an eight-module civic curriculum designed to stimulate public participation,
scientific imagination, and civic engagement in African countries. It also outlines a new academic designation –
Child-Professor of STS – to recognize and incentivize deep techno-civic literacy.
Key Concepts: African Technological Nationalism, Civic Education, Science and Technology Studies (STS),
African Futurism, Speculative Pedagogy, Technological Citizenship, Child-Author Development Programme
(CADP), Civic Science Fiction, Youth Innovation, Curriculum Reform in Africa, Technological Takeoff.
INTRODUCTION
African nations have historically faced systemic exclusion from the epistemic and infrastructural regimes of
global technological development (Makinde, 2021). Despite producing brilliant minds and contributing to global
knowledge systems, the continent remains on the periphery of high-technology innovation.
i
This marginalization
is embedded in economic structures and also in educational paradigms (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012) that fail
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to develop the imagination and technical agency of the African child. The current models of Civic Education in
Africa, largely inherited from colonial systems, are ill-equipped to address the needs of a 21st-century
technological society.
ii
These curricula often neglect the socio-technical dimensions of citizenship
iii
and ignore
the role of young citizens in shaping their technological futures.
The Child-Author Development Programme (CADP) proposes an imaginative and radical departure from this
status quo through its new civic curriculum, Civic Education for Technological Takeoff (CETT). Through an
integration of speculative storytelling, civic imagination, and African techno-futures, CETT seeks to prepare
African children to participate meaningfully in actualizing the technological destiny of their nations.
iv
The
curriculum emphasizes the development of critical science consciousness, public engagement with science and
technology, and imaginative thinking, thereby reconfiguring Civic Education as a strategic tool for African
technological emancipation.
v
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
African Technological Nationalism
African Technological Nationalism, as proposed by Nwosu (2023), is the ideological assertion that Africa’s
political and economic self-reliance must be embedded in indigenous technological capability. CETT draws
from this premise by embedding Civic Education in a nationalist narrative of African techno-development.
According to Nwosu (ibid.), African Technological Nationalism, as an emerging ideological framework asserts
that Africa's political sovereignty and perpetual economic progress must be founded on domestic technological
development. African Technological Nationalism reframes technology as a national resource and identity
marker. Technology cannot be a foreign import or external dependency (Nwosu, 2021). CETT draws heavily
from this ideological framework, embedding civic learning within the broader narrative of technological self-
reliance. In CETT, children are introduced to the idea that participating in technology design, regulation, and
discourse through speculative fiction writing is not only possible but necessary for authentic African citizenship
in the 21st Century.
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Civic Education, when intersected with STS, opens up pathways for young learners to critically interrogate the
power dynamics, including the social forces, the techno-politics, and the ethics of technological systems
(Jasanoff, 2004). More importantly, the STS methodologies of Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) (with
its core notion of interpretive flexibility),
vi
and Actor-Network Theory (with its core notion of translation)
vii
(Latour, 2005) are embedded in this New Civic Education as non-political pathways for African societies to
engage with their technological inventions and their inventors in regimes of technology demystification and
technology democratization.
viii
Science and Technology Studies (STS) provides a critical lens through which
technology is examined as a socially constructed phenomenon. This interdisciplinary field explores how social,
political, and cultural values shape and are shaped by scientific knowledge and technological systems. CETT
incorporates STS concepts, particularly the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), to empower students to
interrogate the sociocultural and the socio-technical dynamics embedded in technology. Children are encouraged
to question who designs technology, for whom, and to what end. Through incorporating STS into Civic
Education, CETT introduces learners to the ethical, social, and cultural dimensions of technology, raising a
generation of reflective and responsible techno-citizens.
African Futurism and Speculative Pedagogy
African Futurism, as articulated by thinkers like Nnedi Okorafor (2019), focuses on African cultural aesthetics
and worldviews in speculative fiction. Unlike mainstream science fiction, which often marginalizes African
perspectives, African Futurism creates space for African imaginaries in future worlds. CETT adapts this genre
as a pedagogical tool – a mode of instruction that uses storytelling to simulate civic scenarios, future challenges,
and speculative solutions. This speculative pedagogy enables children to imagine alternative futures where
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Africa leads in science, technology, and innovation through their recreations of the roles of social forces and
actor-networks in the technology-innovation process. It also allows for a reintegration of indigenous knowledge
systems into futuristic discourse (Eglash, 1999), imbuing African youth with epistemic agency. CETT’s
adaptation of this genre into a pedagogical form, using storytelling as a tool for civic literacy, memory
reconstruction, and future-oriented thinking becomes an innovation in itself for scholars of Education Policy and
STS especially in Third World countries.
METHODOLOGY: CURRICULUM DESIGN AND PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH
CETT was developed using a design-based research approach involving iterative curriculum prototyping,
facilitator feedback, and content testing with target age groups. The curriculum comprises seven interconnected
learning modules, each blending theoretical instruction with creative application. Pedagogical methods include
storytelling, debate, role-play, collaborative projects, public speaking, certification and cash award structure to
incentivize excellence. These techniques are designed to convey content and also to cultivate public reasoning,
technological imagination, and civic engagement in the participants.
A comprehensive facilitator’s handbook accompanies the curriculum, providing session breakdowns, discussion
prompts, assessment rubrics, and project templates. Additional learning materials include participant storybooks,
writing templates, and multimedia content. This toolkit ensures that facilitators are well-equipped to guide
learners through both the cognitive and creative demands of the CETT framework. Importantly, the curriculum
is adaptable across languages and local contexts, reinforcing its potential for continental scalability.
CURRICULUM OUTLINE: MODULES AND OUTCOMES
The Civic Education for Technological Takeoff (CETT) curriculum consists of eight interconnected modules,
each purposefully designed to fertilize a child’s intellectual, civic, and imaginative development. These modules
build a progressive cognitive arc – from understanding the role of the child in African technological citizenship
to producing civic science fiction stories that simulate future policy, technology, and justice scenarios for
publishing. Each module blends content knowledge with experiential and creative pedagogy, resulting in both
academic outcomes and civic artefacts.
ix
Each of the seven modules in CETT is designed to fertilize and activate
students' understanding of technological citizenship, progressing from foundational concepts to active
participation. The following is an outline of the CADP Civic Education Curriculum:
a. Introduction to African Technological Nationalism
Core Objective:
To introduce learners to the ideological foundation of Civic Education for Technological Takeoff –
African Technological Nationalism – and to awaken in them a deep civic consciousness of Africa’s
technological future as a matter of self-reliance, sovereignty, and cultural imagination.
Core Themes:
Nationalism and technological sovereignty
Historical exclusion and contemporary opportunity
Technology as cultural identity and civic obligation
Africa’s destiny in global innovation ecologies
Module Overview:
This foundational module orients learners to the ideological compass of the entire CETT curriculum:
African Technological Nationalism (ATN). It introduces children to the argument that no nation can
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be truly sovereign without domestic technological capability, and that African identity in the 21st
century must include an affirmative orientation toward invention, systems design, and technological
imagination.
Children are guided through historical snapshots of technological dependency in Africa – from colonial
infrastructural impositions to postcolonial technology imports – and are invited to ask: Why has Africa
remained a consumer, rather than a designer, of technological futures? Through storytelling, roleplay,
and media analysis, the module demystifies technology as a neutral force and repositions it as a civic
artefact and political tool.
Learners are introduced to the concept of technology as an expression of national will, examining how
nations such as Japan, South Korea, and India cultivated innovation ecosystems as strategies of
postcolonial strength. The African child is taught that technological underdevelopment is not destiny, but
the result of political decisions – and that those decisions can be reversed through civic will, knowledge
justice, and innovation ethics.
They examine African inventors and innovators who have historically resisted marginality by creating
homegrown solutions, even in obscurity. Through discussions and mini-biographies, children are
challenged to see themselves as heirs and successors of that resistance – as citizens of the techno-
nationalist vanguard.
Sample Learning Activities:
Civic Map: Children draw or digitally create a “Technological Map of Africa” featuring
inventors, hubs, and innovations by African nationals.
National Imagination Workshop: Learners engage in speculative group writing wherein they
imagine a future where their country exports technology globally.
Reflective Essay: “What Does it Mean to Love Africa Technologically?” – A short writing
exercise designed to deepen personal civic orientation to African innovation.
Pedagogical Purpose:
This module lays the intellectual and ideological groundwork for CETT. It redefines civic love of country
in technological terms. To love Africa, the child learns, is to believe in her inventive capacity – and to
defend it with stories, policies, and prototypes. It is to affirm that the African flag must be flown not only
at the UN, but more importantly in global labs, launchpads, patents, and codebases.
Outcome:
By the end of this module, the African child begins to internalize a new identity: the image-identity of
a future African inventor or a lover and promoter of African inventions and not just a future voter.
The concept of African Technological Nationalism therein becomes a formative civic commitment – a
lens through which all future civic actions, writings, and debates are interpreted.
x
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this module, learners will be able to:
a. Define African Technological Nationalism and explain its role in civic life and national
development.
b. Identify historical factors that have shaped Africa’s relationship with science and technology.
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c. Recognize the difference between being a user of imported technology and a builder of
indigenous innovation.
d. Articulate the importance of national pride and civic responsibility in technological development.
e. Reflect on their personal role as child-authors and young citizens in shaping Africa’s scientific
destiny.
b. The African Child as a Technological Citizen
This module introduces African children to the idea that citizenship in the digital age involves
technological awareness, responsibility, and agency.
Objective: To introduce children to the idea that citizenship in the 21st century includes technological
fluency, ethical participation, and creative agency (Appiah, 2005).
Core Themes:
Civic identity in the digital age
Children as shapers, not just subjects, of technological systems
Digital rights and responsibilities
Early exposure to the ethics of innovation
This foundational module invites learners to reconsider what it means to be a "citizen" in technologically
saturated societies. Children are taught to see themselves as active participants in shaping Africa’s
technological trajectory and not passive consumers of imported technology. Activities include drawing
self-portraits as "techno-citizens," exploring mobile technology rights, and discussing real-life examples
of youth tech activism in Africa.
a. What is Technological Takeoff? This module explores historical and contemporary examples of
technological revolutions and what Africa can learn from them.
Objective: To ground students in the historical and contemporary narratives of technological revolutions
and to examine what Africa can learn and do differently.
This module reframes the idea of "catching up" technologically, introducing children to alternative
trajectories of innovation. Using storytelling and comparative timelines, learners explore how countries
like South Korea and China structured their takeoffs. They debate: What would a uniquely African
technological takeoff look like? The idea of technological nationalism is introduced here as a guiding
civic and strategic principle.
b. African Inventors, African Memory: Engages students with local inventors and forgotten histories of
science and technology in Africa, thereby immortalizing African contributions to science and technology.
Objective: To restore African agency by recovering the ignored legacies of African inventors,
technologists, and scientific thinkers.
This module emphasizes memory as a civic act. Learners conduct research projects or oral interviews
about local inventors (Eglash, 1999) or artisans and re-narrate their contributions through story. They
learn that forgetting is a form of dispossession – and remembering is a form of civic resistance (Nwosu,
2020). The result is the re-insertion of Africa into global narratives of innovation and the creation of
knowledge archives by children themselves.
c. Technology, Power, and Justice: This module encourages students to analyze how technology can
reinforce or resist structures of inequality.
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Objective: To develop learners’ critical awareness of how technological systems are embedded with
power dynamics, and how these systems can both reproduce and challenge injustice.
Here, children grapple with questions like: Who controls technology? Who benefits? Who is
harmed? (Feenberg, 2017). Drawing from the STS framework of the social construction of technology
(SCOT), learners participate in role-plays simulating debates around AI surveillance in schools, or digital
ID systems in elections. They are taught that ethical engagement with technology is not optional – it is a
civic obligation.
d. Faith, Identity, and the African Future: Here, the CETT curriculum examines how cultural and
religious identities intersect with the people’s technological aspirations.
Objective: To enable learners, explore the intersections between spirituality, cultural identity, and
Africa’s technological aspirations.
Core Themes:
Religious values and techno-ethics
Indigenous cosmologies and innovation
Faith-based communities as incubators of tech hope
Navigating plural identities in a digital world
Rather than dismiss religion as anti-scientific, this module invites critical integration. Students explore
how their spiritual and moral values influence their visions of the future (Wiredu, 1998; Appiah, 2005;
Nwosu, 2019). Through debates, interviews with faith leaders, and creative writing, they articulate
techno-visions grounded in values of justice, stewardship, and collective good. Children learn to design
futures that don’t erase but embrace their multiple identities.
e. Writing Africa’s Civic Technological Future (Civic Science Fiction as Public Discourse): This
module guides students in crafting speculative civic science fiction stories as public engagement tools.
Objective: To guide learners in composing civic science fiction stories that explore Africa’s techno-
political futures and serve as tools of public engagement.
Core Themes:
Story as simulation: using fiction to model policy and future dilemmas
Characterizing future African leaders, scientists, activists
Crafting speculative civic scenarios
Translating technological imagination into civic imagination
This is the curriculum’s creative core. Learners are taught the basics of narrative structure, futurist
worldbuilding, and civic imagination. They write stories featuring African child-scientists, mayors, AI
inventors, or ecological activists grappling with challenges such as climate migration, nanotechnology
ethics, or post-oil governance. Their fiction becomes a civic intervention, presenting possible futures and
proposing value-based solutions to tomorrow’s problems (Nwosu, 2022).
f. Publishing, Presenting & Participating: At this stage we publish students’ stories in anthologies on
global and local book publishing platforms. The module here prepares them to share their work in public
forums, simulating democratic engagement and peer learning.
Objective: To facilitate public dissemination and democratic participation by publishing the students’
stories in anthologies and by organizing them to present their stories to real audiences.
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Core Themes:
The civic function of storytelling
Youth participation in national and local forums
Public speaking and peer engagement
Intergenerational dialogue and advocacy
In this culminating module, the curriculum becomes praxis. Following publishing, learners publicly present their
stories at school events, community libraries, radio stations, or youth summits. Selected works are compiled into
anthologies and published locally and globally. This module simulates real democratic participation – allowing
children to occupy the civic space with their speculative texts and speak directly to technocrats, educators, and
policymakers.
Their stories become schoolwork and also, more importantly, civic artefacts – provocations for public reasoning,
artefacts of technological imagination, and tools of intergenerational justice.
xi
The curriculum culminates in at least one creative story authored by the student. These narratives serve as both
pedagogical artefacts and instruments of civic participation, inviting dialogue on the future of technology in
African societies.
Each CETT module is a mirror and a window – a mirror in which African children see themselves as rightful
owners of their future, and a window into the futures they are being prepared to create. These eight modules
together form a techno-civic literacy architecture that reinvents storytelling beyond its traditional utilitarian
functions of entertainment and pedagogy, to include novel functions such as political practice, intellectual
intervention, and nation-building strategy.
The final story authored by each participant then becomes a capstone – a civic deed. It becomes a nexus between
their learning and Africa’s future, a speculative blueprint through which the African child – bold, brilliant, and
assertive – joins the vanguard of global technological imagination.
5. The Child-Professor of STS Designation
A core innovation of CETT is the creation of the Child-Professor of STS designation, which formally recognizes
children who demonstrate advanced civic-technological literacy. This distinction is awarded based on three
criteria: (1) completion of the Child-Author Proficiency Certificate, (2) submission of an accepted civic science
fiction story for publication, (3) completion of the Child-Professor of STS Curriculum which includes advanced
technology domestication and technology demystification epistemes.
Each awardee receives a N100,000 cash prize and a certificate endorsed by an academic moderator from a
partnering university (Nwosu, 2023). This designation serves as a powerful motivator and public signal of
excellence, modelling a scholar-practitioner pathway for young Africans. It also encourages mentorship, as
students develop confidence in presenting complex socio-technical ideas before peers, educators, and community
members.
6. Implications for African Civic Education Policy
Civic Education for Technological Takeoff (CETT) introduces a transformative lens through which
policymakers, educators, and curriculum developers can reimagine civic instruction. Through positioning
technology as a civic concern, CETT breaks new ground in how African children understand their
responsibilities and opportunities within a techno-driven world. Its implications include:
i. Curriculum Reform
CETT offers a viable model for integrating speculative fiction, civic ethics, and technological fluency
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into national education systems (Ogunbanjo, 2018). It aligns well with the goals of 21st-century skills
development, including critical thinking, creativity, and digital literacy.
ii. Policy Innovation
The programme advances a novel understanding of civic engagement – one that goes beyond electoral
participation to include technological imagination and innovation. CETT thus contributes to nation-
building beyond the conventional political discourse through public-oriented technological imagination
and inquiry.
iii. Public Participation
CETT redefines children as active contributors to national conversations on science, ethics, and the future
(Nwosu, 2022). Their stories become participatory texts that invite adults, policymakers, and technocrats
into intergenerational dialogues about Africa’s path forward.
CONCLUSION
Civic Education for Technological Takeoff (CETT) embodies a new civic epistemology for Africa that
recognizes imagination as a political tool and storytelling as a civic act (Nwosu, 2020; Nwosu, 2023). Through
equipping African children to narrate, design, and critique technological futures, the Child-Author Development
Programme offers a revolutionary model of youth empowerment and educational reform. CETT not only
prepares students to understand technology but to engage with it as citizens, creators, and change agents. It is a
call to educators, policymakers, and communities to invest in the civic intelligence of Africa’s youth as a
cornerstone of the continent’s technological liberation.
REFERENCES
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5. Jasanoff, S. (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order. Routledge.
6. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University
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7. Makinde, T. (2021). Science, technology and Africa’s development dilemma. African Journal of
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8. Nwosu, T. I. (2019). Faith, identity, and the African techno-future [Unpublished monograph].
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13. Ogunbanjo, A. (2018). Civic education in Nigeria: Challenges and
prospects in the 21st century.
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 6(3), 45–56.
14. Okorafor, N. (2019). Africanfuturism defined. Retrieved from https://nnedi.com/africanfuturism-defined
15. Wiredu, K. (1998). Toward decolonizing African philosophy and religion. African Studies Quarterly, 1(4),
17–46.
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APPENDIX
CADP CIVIC EDUCATION CONCEPTUAL PAPERS
Being
Conceptual Papers for Integrating the CADP Curriculum into African Civic Education Programmes
1. Conceptualizing the CHILD-AUTHOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME as the Missing Element in
African Civic Education Programmes. (CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers: No. 1.)
2. Civic Education for Technological Takeoff: The Child-Author Development Programme as the
Reimagination of African Technological Citizenship. (CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers: No. 2.)
3. The African Child as a Technological Citizen (CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers: No. 3.)
4. Redefining Civic Responsibility as Scientific Leadership: the CADP Civic Education Model. (CADP Civic
Education Conceptual Papers: No. 4.)
5. CADP Stories as Informal Civic Science Education Tools. (CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers:
No. 5.)
6. Immortalizing African Inventors: The Function of CADP in Recovering the Erased Civic Memory of
African Scientific Agency. (CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers: No. 6.)
7. Building the Personality-Type of the Technological Nationalist: the CADP-Civic Education Model.
(CADP Civic Education Conceptual Papers: No. 7.)
PROJECT PARTNERS
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Endnotes
i. Despite producing brilliant minds and contributing to global knowledge systems, the continent remains on the
periphery of high-technology innovation. p. 2. CETT as the Redefinition of Civic Education.
Civic Education for Technological Takeoff (CETT) redefines Civic Education beyond mere transmission
of governance literacy or patriotic ideals, to include the construction of technologically situated
citizenship. CETT proposes a paradigm shift where civic participation is broadened beyond voting or
social responsibility into the active imagination, critique, and design of technological systems as a civic
deed.
This supports Sheila Jasanoff’s (2004) notion of the co-production of science and social order, where
the shaping of knowledge systems and political life are interdependent. CETT operationalizes this co-
production by creating African children as upstream co-authors of technological systems rather than
downstream users of imported science.
CETT thus extends the jurisdiction of citizenship to include the technological future of the nation. It re-
scripts the African child from a passive civic actor to an epistemic agent in Africa’s techno-political
reconstruction.
The critique of colonial Civic Education frameworks draws from postcolonial studies, which emphasize
how inherited curricula often reproduce dependence. In reframing Civic Education through technological
imagination, CADP reclaims epistemic sovereignty for Africa’s children.
ii. The current models of Civic Education in Africa, largely inherited from colonial systems, are ill-equipped to
address the needs of a 21st-century technological society. p.2. CETT as Political Practice for 21st-
Century Africa.
Though a pedagogical ornament, CETT models storytelling as imaginative political practice. In the 21st
century – where algorithms, data regimes, and platform economies constitute power – the ability to
narrate futures becomes a central mode of political engagement. CETT teaches African children to
simulate policy, ethics, and innovation futures via speculative fiction.
Ricoeur’s work on narrative identity and the “imaginative variations” of possible futures (Ricoeur, 1984)
supports this. CETT deploys narrative as an anticipatory tool, a political rehearsal through fiction.
Through CETT, African Science Fiction becomes a sovereign technology – a civic simulator for training
the African mind in foresight, responsibility, and intergenerational design thinking.
iii. These curricula often neglect the socio-technical dimensions of citizenship… p. 2. CETT as Indigenous
Intellectual Architecture.
Unlike Euro-American civics models, CETT originates from African epistemologies, spiritual identities,
and political aspirations. It is a civic curriculum with an indigenous spine – embedding African
Technological Nationalism and memory justice into its pedagogical blueprint.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1986) emphasized the decolonization of the mind through language and memory.
CETT follows this trajectory, integrating epistemic resistance into formal civic instruction.
CETT is not a curriculum imported for localization – it is a curriculum born of location. Its epistemic
legitimacy is ancestral, not borrowed. It is pedagogy reassembled from Africa’s own unfinished
technological imagination.
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iv. Through an integration of speculative storytelling, civic imagination, and African techno-futures, CETT seeks
to prepare African children to participate meaningfully in actualizing the technological destiny of their
nations. p.2. CETT as the Democratization of African Technological Aspirations
CETT democratizes technological discourse by removing it from the exclusive domains of experts,
engineers, and bureaucrats — and making it available to children, communities, and storytellers. Through
storytelling and debate, children simulate participation in decisions around surveillance, AI, climate
policy, and infrastructure.
This reflects Langdon Winner’s (1986) assertion that technologies have political qualities. CETT ensures
these political qualities are scrutinized and reimagined in classrooms, and not exclusively in think
tanks.
CETT is technological democracy at the grassroots — enabling participation in what technology does
and in what it ought to become.
v. The curriculum emphasizes the development of critical science consciousness, public engagement with
science and technology, and imaginative thinking, thereby reconfiguring Civic Education as a strategic
tool for African technological emancipation. p. 2. CETT as Curriculum for Policy Simulation.
In CETT, the child’s story becomes a speculative policy text. Stories do not merely entertain; they
simulate ethical dilemmas, governance breakdowns, and alternate legal futures. Civic Science Fiction
thus functions as a tool of futurist jurisprudence, inviting reflection on regulatory architectures yet to
exist.
This echoes the methodological proposition in Leach, Scoones, and Stirling’s (2007) work on pathways
to sustainability, where narratives are used to explore future socio-technical trajectories.
Here, the child does not “study” policy — the child writes it, tests it, and invents its logics. CETT turns
classrooms into policy laboratories, and child-authors into policy prefigurators.
vi. Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) (with its core notion of interpretive flexibility) … p. 3.
Interpretive flexibility is a core concept in Science and Technology Studies (STS), especially within
the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework. It refers to the idea that technologies do not
have a fixed or inherent meaning. Instead, their design, use, and significance are shaped by different
social groups who interpret them in varying ways based on their needs, values, and experiences. In
simpler terms: a single technology can mean different things to different people, and its "meaning" or
function evolves as various groups interact with it.
vii. Actor-Network Theory (with its core notion of translation) … p. 3. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in
Science and Technology Studies (STS) is a theoretical and methodological approach developed mainly
by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law. ANT seeks to understand how scientific knowledge,
technologies, and social realities are co-produced through networks of both human and non-human
actors. Rather than frame them as top-down plans or lone-genius moments, ANT reframes stories and
strategies like CADP and African Technological Nationalism as webs of interaction between humans
and things, meanings and materials, inventions and institutions, all shaping Africa's path toward
scientific self-determination.
In Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the core concept that best embeds or summarizes its philosophy –
similar to how interpretive flexibility anchors SCOT – is Translation. Why Translation? Translation
is the engine of ANT. It describes how actors – both human and non-human – negotiate, enroll, and align
one another’s interests into a network that becomes stable and coherent over time. In essence,
translation is how reality is assembled.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS)
ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.51584/IJRISS | Volume X Issue X October 2025
Page 8497
www.rsisinternational.org
viii. are embedded in this New Civic Education as non-political pathways for African societies to engage with
their technological inventions and their inventors in regimes of technology demystification and
technology democratization. p.3. CETT as Youth Innovation Framework.
CETT serves as an institutional structure for discovering, certifying, and rewarding youth civic-
technological innovation. Through the Child-Professor of STS designation, CETT creates a scholar-
practitioner identity for young Africans – one that fuses storytelling with systems thinking.
This model resonates with Maker Pedagogy and Participatory Action Research (Rappaport, 1987;
Halverson & Sheridan, 2014), which affirm children’s capacity to theorize and intervene in social
systems through creation.
The child is not a junior citizen. The child is a proto-visionary, whose imagination holds latent design
codes for the African techno-future. CETT installs a framework that certifies excellence as a civic virtue.
not just an academic score.
ix. Each module blends content knowledge with experiential and creative pedagogy, resulting in both academic
outcomes and civic artefacts. p.4. CETT as Infrastructure for New Intellectual History.
CETT constructs a parallel archive – an intellectual infrastructure where the thoughts of children on AI,
nationhood, ecology, and innovation are published, anthologized, and cited. These civic texts become
contributions to a new history of African ideas.
This notion mirrors Achille Mbembe’s call for epistemic delinking and for Africa to become the site of
intellectual originality (Mbembe, 2016). CETT fulfills this by generating child-authored narratives as
primary texts in civic futures scholarship.
CETT is more than curriculum. It is a print infrastructure of African futurity. It installs a generation
of thinkers whose first civic act is to author history forward.
x. The concept of African Technological Nationalism therein becomes a formative civic commitment – a lens
through which all future civic actions, writings, and debates are interpreted. p.5.
CETT is a foundational civic infrastructure for the ideological project of African Technological
Nationalism. It supplies the citizen-subject, the epistemic toolset, and the narrative agency required to
build a continent defined by design sovereignty, not by debt or aid. This agrees with Walter Mignolo’s
(2011) concept of epistemic disobedience, where colonized communities reorient development on their
own terms, using tools of their own invention.
CETT is an architecture of resistance: not armed, but intellectual; not reactionary, but prophetic. It is the
civic base station of the technological Africa to come. CETT as Civic Architecture for African
Technological Nationalism.
xi. Their stories become schoolwork and also, more importantly, civic artefacts – provocations for public
reasoning, artefacts of technological imagination, and tools of intergenerational justice. p.10.
This statement underscores the translation of children’s stories within the CADP framework from mere
pedagogical exercises into civic artefacts with enduring social and political significance. While
functioning as schoolwork that builds literacy and critical skills, these narratives simultaneously operate
as instruments of public reasoning, stimulating collective debate on Africa’s technological future. They
become artefacts of technological imagination, embodying African epistemologies and projecting
alternative futures beyond dependence on imported models. Most importantly, they act as tools of
intergenerational justice, ensuring that the visions, anxieties, and aspirations of today’s children are
preserved as civic claims upon the future, demanding accountability from present and future leaders. In
this way, each child-authored story is both a classroom exercise and a civic deed – an intellectual
intervention into Africa’s technological destiny.
