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Workers are increasingly expected to take on the responsibility and effort of preparing for employment in the new economy, where digital technologies play a central role in bridging access to resources, connections, and opportunity. Drawing from multi-year studies of entrepreneurs in Accra and Detroit, two cities that continue to experience high rates of inequality and persistently low incomes for the majority of their residents, this article highlights three key challenges to self-entrepreneurialization in the digital age: self-upgrading, maintaining technology, and overcoming exclusion. Locating these challenges at the intersection of (1) two powerful global discourses of entrepreneurialism and technology upgrade and (2) class frictions and racial dynamics, this paper uncovers ways in which CSCW might support entrepreneurialism in the new economy, particularly given that it is becoming a de facto space of work and mode of living.

This article argues that the material history of mobile phones as they took shape in Ghana reveals them to be essential parts of radio’s infrastructure; one that is social, informal, and transnational. Using the radio tuning feature on mobile phones as an emblematic device, this article unpacks the sociotechnical infrastructure underpinning radio’s continued dominance in Ghana, revealing the intersecting logics that help to sustain the media technology landscape in the country.

This article presents a combination of factors as a framework for examining how globalization and media impact developing democracies in the Global South. In particular, it pays attention to the interplay of changing technologies, regulatory regimes and local entrepreneurs with global expertise (obtained primarily through education overseas) and their combined impact on the media ecology in such countries. Using a historical analysis of the trends that started in the early 1990s, the article shows how countries like Ghana took advantage of key changes in globalization to create a vibrant media ecology that directly impacts the role of citizens. Specifically, the author posits that in Ghana the liberalization of the broadcast industry, the expertise of glocal entrepreneurs, and the explosion of new communication technologies like the Internet and mobile phones have led to a reconstitution of the public sphere and the creation of a new cultural elite.