Description
This paper explores the strategic logic underlying the US, China, and the European Union's respective efforts to build the cyber capacity of African states. By introducing a new theoretical model, the paper chiefly argues that cyber capacity building processes are viewed as strategically useful to donors (the US, China, and the EU) so long as they can reconfigure networked asymmetries in the donor's favour. Supporting the model, the paper empirically illustrates that investing in the cyber capacity of a recipient—in the form of infrastructural investments, knowledge transfers, and norm exporation—has been perceived by US, Chinese, and EU policymakers as a crucial strategic lever to strengthen their own positions in the global digital network. Therefore, digital 'peripheries', despite their scant representation in scholarship, have become crucial for American, Chinese, and European Union strategies in the digital domain.
