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Foregrounding African women's ingenuity and labor, this pioneering
case study shows how women in rural Mali have used technology to
ensure food security through the colonial period, environmental
crises, and postcolonial rule. By advocating for an understanding
of rural Malian women as engineers, Laura Ann Twagira rejects the
persistent image of African women as subjects without technological
knowledge or access and instead reveals a hidden history about
gender, development, and improvisation. In so doing, she also
significantly expands the scope of African science and technology
studies. Using the Office du Niger agricultural project as a case
study, Twagira argues that women used modest technologies (such as
a mortar and pestle or metal pots) and organized female labor to
create, maintain, and reengineer a complex and highly adaptive food
production system. While women often incorporated labor-saving
technologies into their work routines, they did not view their own
physical labor as the problem it is so often framed to be in
development narratives. Rather, women's embodied techniques and
knowledge were central to their ability to transform a development
project centered on export production into an environmental
resource that addressed local taste and consumption needs.
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