Mwangi notes that Walibora’s Ndoto ya Amerika seems to see the nation as a privileged site to "counteract the domestication of communities of the southern hemisphere into a homogenized western-dominated social and political order," (130). Mwangi calls this a "rooted cosmopolitanism" that he argues is significant because it does not require one to be deterritorialized or to physically travel and cross national borders in order to be cosmopolitan and global. He articulates that it is a cosmopolitanism that does not demand abandonment of one’s national identity." (130) This is relevant for Leo's and my piece thinking about the applicability of "cosmopolitanism" and the development of the Nairobi tech sector. How are cosmopolitan values assigned to data in Nairobi not necessarily at odds with “local identities"? Like Mwangi, Simone also takes issue with the way that the multiplicity of domains and histories of the "Global South" have been flattened into a homogenized western-dominated social and political order. However, he articulates that Southern cities are significantly deterritorialized as cohesive entities even as they "continue to struggle with the encumbrance of having to pragmatically and institutionally function as concrete identities." (Simone 2020: 612).
