Global Digital Capitalism, Imperialism, and a ‘New Africa’: a Political Economic Study of Submarine Cable Ownership and Control in the Post-Colony

ChukwuEmeka Nwankwo, Joseph (2025) Global Digital Capitalism, Imperialism, and a ‘New Africa’: a Political Economic Study of Submarine Cable Ownership and Control in the Post-Colony. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the ownership and control of Africa’s digital ecosystem using submarine cables (specifically, Google’s Equiano Submarine Cable and Equinix’s MainOne Submarine Cable) in Nigeria as a case study. It makes this inquiry from the perspectives of political economy and post-colonialism by exploring the connection between communication infrastructure, capitalism and imperialism within the context of geopolitics in the digital era. It asks a crucial question as to how the ownership and control of critical communication infrastructures may pose a risk and how it affects international politics based on the belief that network technologies are integral for economic success and political control. By converging telecommunication, media, and technology (TMT) under the digital media paradigm, this study identifies the increasing centralisation of the pillars of the digital economy (software, hardware, and network connectivity) under the ownership and control of a few multinational corporations from a handful of countries. It argues that submarine cables, as the engine of modern international political economy, are the facilitating pillar of the digital economy and the global network society as it internationalises the internet and connects geographies. Through historical and theoretical analysis, this research shows that cables have a historical relationship with capitalism as facilitators of imperialism, enablers of commerce, and power hierarchies. Within this context, it argues that cables are one of the forces that shaped and are shaping ideas of modernity (ergo, coloniality), contemporary political economics, knowledge production. Due to its strategic and historic role in the global economy, the ownership and control of submarine cables provides a window to understand the evolution of communication technologies, its historical role in shaping the global political economy since the nineteenth century, and how modernity and coloniality within a one-world system may be ordered around communication technology. Studying the implications of ownership and control of submarine cables given its imbrication in international politics and hegemonic influence – including imperialism and neo-colonialism globally and, as is the case with this project, on the African continent – is imperative. For its methodology, this research uses a complex interplay of qualitative methods: process tracing, thematic analysis, and case studies. Process tracing allowed this research to study the evolution of imperialism (historical events and theories) and to link it to communication technologies. The research methods used allowed the research to answer the research questions raised and to identify underlying concepts within the emerging field of digital coloniality. The findings demonstrate the connection between imperialism and technology: the thesis, using the ideas of a network effect to argue for imperialism as a type of network, demonstrated that Big Tech’s Next Billion User discourse is another iteration of capitalist and imperialist expansion; and that TMT convergence and the centralisation of digital ecosystem within the control of a few multinationals, is digital imperialism in action. Finally, this thesis makes unique contribution to knowledge: it expands on Africa as Method as a decolonial methodological and epistemological approach for studying (digital) infrastructure in the post-colony, it proposed and outlined a theoretical framework for understanding the muddled field of digital coloniality, it suggests a new thematic framework (capital, knowledge, governance) for investigating digital coloniality, and it examined digital infrastructure – an aspect of the digital economy that is understudied. This study concludes by exploring whether decolonisation of submarine cables is possible and explores the future of the internet under centralised ownership and control.