This paper describes the appropriation processes involved in establishing a socio-technical enabling infrastructure in a valley in the High Atlas of Morocco. We focus on the challenges of co-establishing such an intervention in a rural/mountainous region that is already undergoing a process of continuous development and profound transformation. We reflect upon the changes and unforeseen appropriation by our local partners and inhabitants in the valley of a computer club primarily used as an informal learning centre for school children. We followed an ethnographic approach and combined research perspectives from both socio-informatics and anthropology. This paper sheds light on what a successful cooperation and intervention in this kind of challenging environment can look like. It does this by taking seriously competing expectations, fragile infrastructural foundations and the socio-cultural context. Despite the challenges, the intervention managed to lead to the establishment of a socio-technical enabling infrastructure that plays a particularly valuable role in local educational endeavours and that is now moving towards supporting other members of the community. The paper thus provides insights regarding what has to be considered to create a mutually beneficial cooperation with all relevant stakeholders as well as a sustainable intervention.

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Projekte zu Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Globalen Süden operieren mit impliziten und expliziten Vorstellungen, Ansprüchen und Zielen. Die kritische Reflexion zu den Rahmenbedingungen, dem ethischen Status und den Konsequenzen solcher IKT-Interventionen und -Projekte kommt dabei oft zu kurz. Durch eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive und unter Rückgriff auf post- und dekoloniale Theorie können die Bedingungen und Partizipationsmöglichkeiten von „Nord-Süd-Kooperationen“ problematisiert und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden Begriffe, Konzepte und deren Konnotationen kritisch beleuchtet werden. Auf der Basis eigener Erfahrungen mit designorientierten Herangehensweisen in einem entwicklungs- und bildungspolitischen Projekt im Hohen Atlas in Marokko sollen diese Kritiken und Problemstellungen veranschaulicht und reflektiert werden. Indem eigene Vorannahmen, Erwartungen und Ansprüche auf den Prüfstand gestellt und Projektverlauf, Technikaneignung und interne Kommunikation nicht als gesetzt, sondern als prozesshaft und wechselseitig aushandelbar verstanden werden, können die Bedingungen für Kooperation in eine dekoloniale Richtung weisen.

In this chapter I am concerned with water. To be more precise, I am concerned with the restructuring, or indeed, the 're-infrastructuring' of the water supply in the village of Amezray. Although this is a quite specific "ethnographic moment" (see Strathern 1999), I will approach it in a broader and more holistic way. In doing so, I want to obviate my thinking on what water is and what it means in this particular context (cf. Krause/Strang 2016; Krause 2018). The leading question is: What are the social practices, technological preconditions, and political forms of organization that underpin how people engage with water and how a water supply system is implemented? To answer this question, I draw mainly on ethnographic material while providing context by drawing on recent literature concerning the infrastructure of water.My focus is on the village of Amezray where I and many of my main interlocutors, research partners and friends lived. Moreover, Amezray SMNID, the main association I was working with during my stay in the valley was equally based there. It just so happened that I was present when the association began working on a new water supply system. I ended up sitting in assemblies convened by the association in order to inform the community about the project, its goals, and scope. Friends of mine would also explain certain aspects of the project to me, and I equally witnessed the installation process of a new water connection and water meter in the house were I was living. I realized that I was looking at a new research focus for my dissertation project, led by the empirical occurrences of the particular locality in the High Atlas.

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