New Research on Diaspora and Financial Technology

The Diaspora Studies Initiative of the African Studies Center partnered with the Evergreen program of the Boston University Metropolitan College for the seminar series “Migration and Remittances in the FinTech Era.” Dr. Daivi Rodima-Taylor led the seminars “Sending Money Back Home: Migration from the Global South” and “Financial Technology and Informal Economies in Africa” that took place on November 2 and 10, and included an engagement with the students of Dr. Fallou Ngom’s course “Peoples and Cultures of Africa” (AN 312) on November 15.

Dr. Rodima-Taylor was lead researcher for the Boston University Task Force for Post-Conflict Remittances and Human Security. Her recent work includes an article “Sending Money Home in Conflict Settings: Revisiting Migrant Remittances” in Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (23/1, 2022). She also co-edited (with Paul Langley) a special issue “FinTech in Africa,” published in Journal of Cultural Economy (15/4, 2022). Bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines and fields, the special issue explores what is different about the forms that FinTech is taking in Africa, and considers how foregrounding developments on the continent might reshape social science research agendas and political conversations around FinTech globally. The articles present a range of empirical studies from East, West, and Southern Africa, exploring global BigTech companies and incumbent telecommunications firms, global development industry actors, consultants and state institutions, FinTech startups and their investors, and diverse formal and informal economic networks of FinTech users.

Her another new article “The Veil of Transparency: Blockchain and Sustainability Governance in Global Supply Chains,” co-authored with N. Bernards and M. Campbell-Verduyn in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, is part of their forthcoming jointly edited theme issue “Repoliticizing the Technological Turn.”