Development From the Margins? Mobile Technologies, Transnational Mobilities, and Livelihood Practices Among Ghanaian Women Traders

Abstract

While several studies have explored mobile phone use in the global South, perspectives from Third World and African-centered feminist research that explores the intersection of gender, development, and mobile communication remain peripheral. This article uses a postcolonial feminist lens to examine how Ghanaian women transnational traders operating at the margins of global trade manage and negotiate glocal networks with their mobile phones. The research expands conceptions of the role of mobile phones in development (M4D) Projects By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork to explore women's routine use of mobile phones in organizing and coordinating transnational trade. It examines how Ghanaian women traders attempt to move from the margins of global trade flows toward the center through their self-defined notions of progress.