'We are not done': reclaiming care after mobile health in Burkina Faso.

Abstract

This paper discusses the afterlives of MOS@N, a mobile health (mHealth) intervention which, between 2014 and 2018, monitored maternal and child health in the district of Nouna, in rural Burkina Faso. The paper documents the work of "godmothers," who were hired and equipped with mobile phones to keep track of pregnant women, and accompany them for medical consultations. As is the case with the majority of mHealth projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, MOS@N was a pilot. This paper examines some of the enduring effects of practices of testing and demoing which were designed as temporary. Indeed, three years after MOS@N was shut down, godmothers are still doing care work. This work is now carried mostly on a voluntary basis and implies the constant repair of decaying technology, which undermines some of the original purposes of MOS@N, and (re)produces gendered forms of social obligation. Ultimately, the paper explores the remnants of a settled intervention, and how they may help us challenge imaginations of global health futures.