Over the past decade, international development policy has increasingly turned to financial markets as a way to address social and environmental challenges. This thesis examines how finance enters development through early-stage startup investments in Tanzania, and how the promise of “doing good” is enacted when development programmes, venture capital investors, and entrepreneurs meet around the financing of new ventures.
Focusing on startup finance in the innovation corridor known as Silicon Bongo in Dar es Salaam, the study identifies two partially connected versions of early-stage investment: one organised through venture capital impact investing and another through development programmes that adopt investment formats.
The thesis shows how these encounters transform how “doing good” is defined and valued. Across development programmes, investor reports, and municipal negotiations, claims of social impact are articulated through valuation devices that render some versions of doing good visible and actionable while others remain difficult to recognise. In these processes, realities aligned with global development agendas and financial expectations are foregrounded, while locally grounded forms of doing good in Tanzanian ventures are more easily translated away.
The analysis reveals a paradox. While development programmes increasingly adopt the language and formats of finance, private capital often remains limited. Instead, development largely continues through public funding even as it takes on financial forms. At the same time, financial actors such as impact investors become integrated into development funding circuits as programme operators and grant recipients.
By bringing Science and Technology Studies (STS), valuation studies, and Africanist scholarship into dialogue, the thesis shows that when finance enters development it does not simply mobilise private capital. It reorganises how development is done - often turning investors themselves into participants in existing aid circuits.
Thesis supervisor
The thesis is supervised by Kristin Asdal (Professor and Centre Director at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo).
Commentator
Liliana Doganova (Associate Professor, Centre de sociologie de l’innovation, Mines-ParisTech, PSL University)
About Elisabeth Fosseli Olsen
Elisabeth Fosseli Olsen is a PhD candidate at TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. This seminar marks the final evaluation prior to submission of her dissertation.
How to participate
The seminar is open for everyone to join. Welcome!
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to the candidate at elisabeth@osloinnovationconsultancy.no.