South African, Rural ICT Implementation: a critical retrospective application of Latour's due process model

The potential developmental role of ICTs can pressurise governments to engage in ‘catch up’ and ‘leapfrog’. Consequently, analysis of the accompanying socio-political dimensions and risks can be, disastrously, neglected. This paper examines a specific technology implementation – a South African government sponsored telecentre using Latour’s Due Process model, an analytical tool grounded in Actor-Network Theory, where technology implementation is viewed as a symmetrical treatment of technology and society within a single collective. It is used here, retrospectively, to make sense of why the telecentre both failed to institutionalise within a successful actor-network, and, contributed to the destabilization and partial destruction of a successfully established women’s development organisation.