Andrea Pollio

Andrea Pollio is a Fixed-term Assistant Professor at the Interuniversity Department of Territorial Sciences, Planning and Policies (DIST), affiliated with Turin Polytechnic University. His research focuses on digital capitalism in urban Africa, examining the interplay between global digital platforms (e.g., Uber, Amazon) and local governance in cities like Cape Town, Nairobi, and Kigali. He explores how Silicon Valley ideologies influence humanitarian development and urban infrastructure.

Pollio's recent work addresses:

• Platformization in African mobility sectors
• Financial geographies of Milan's urban transformation
• Smart city experiments (e.g., Nairobi’s fintech ecosystem)
• Data coloniality and technological sovereignty in Nairobi

He supervises PhD students Ikram Ahmad Hajeras Bataineh and Emanuele Sciuva at DIST, and contributes to editorial boards such as Platforms & Society. His projects are funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung, VREF, and Marie Curie Fellowship, with publications spanning Urban Studies, The Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and Economy & Society.