A Digital Race Without Digital Blocs: Explaining Competitive and Constrained Technological Multiplexity in Kenya and Ethiopia

This article asks why intensifying U.S.–China technological rivalry has not produced coherent national digital blocs and why similar partner plurality generates unequal bargaining capacity across African states. It develops a differentiated theory of technological multiplexity: digital systems combine infrastructure, finance, ownership, platforms, rules, skills, and administrative or coercive uses supplied through cross-cutting geopolitical networks, while domestic institutions determine whether this plurality becomes competitive or remains constrained. Building on research on African digital partnership multiplexity, capitalist multiplicity, structural power, and finance-conditioned provider choice, the article specifies five conversion mechanisms: supplier substitutability, financing diversity, decision decentralization, interoperability and switching costs, and regulatory capacity. A structured comparison of Kenya and Ethiopia from 2012 to July 2026 traces twelve procurement, licensing, regulatory, and connectivity episodes using laws, regulator statistics, project documents, operator reports, corporate disclosures, and digital-rights datasets. Kenya approximates qualified competitive multiplexity: cross-layer plurality creates limited opportunities for bargaining and regulatory discipline, although Safaricom’s concentration and platform dependence restrict effective sovereignty. Ethiopia exhibits constrained multiplexity: liberalization multiplied partners and financing channels, but a Chinese-centered installed base, centralized ownership, conflict, foreign-exchange scarcity, and high switching costs preserved asymmetric dependence. Across both cases, vendor nationality alone is insufficient to explain regulatory alignment or coercive use; domestic authorization and control over bottlenecks provide more proximate explanations. The article therefore shifts analysis from whether African states are choosing Washington or Beijing to when layered diversity becomes credible leverage, when it remains additive dependence, and which institutions control the system.