The Africa PID Alliance positions African actors as late entrants to an already-established global infrastructure. Joy Owango states, “Africa really needs to be part of the conversation,” framing participation as integration rather than transformation. While the initiative claims leadership—“we are starting from Africa”—it simultaneously acknowledges that it is “leveraging on existing technology” and partnerships with dominant global actors like Crossref and DataCite. This positions African stakeholders primarily as users and implementers of external infrastructures, not as creators of new epistemic or infrastructural paradigms.
