Infrastructure-as-a-service: Empty skies, bad roads, and the rise of cargo drones

Abstract

In this article, we draw on the case of experimental drone uses in African health care systems in order to explore how diverse actors use digital innovation to stimulate critical changes in infrastructural provision and the ways in which the global role of places such as Silicon Valley, Rwanda, and Ghana, as well as their connections, are configured in such processes. Developing the idea of ‘infrastructure-as-service’ as a concept, we suggest that data extractivism and fantasies of infrastructural leapfrogging are major forces behind emergent fields of infrastructural experimentation. Revisiting dominant theories of infrastructure, the article scrutinizes the promises of digital infrastructures and sheds light on the specific ways in which regions in the Global South participate in, and offer indispensable services for infrastructural changes.