This chapter asks a simple question: in the new struggles around digital technology, is Africa mainly a site of dependence or a space of hard headed transactional bargaining? Drawing on work from science and technology studies, urban studies and political economy, the chapter shows that neither of the usual stories really fits. On one side are long running structures of dependence that stretch from colonial infrastructure and structural adjustment to present day data colonialism, extractive mineral chains and imported platforms. On the other side are real pockets of African agency, especially in cities like Lagos, Nairobi, Kigali and Johannesburg, where local governments, entrepreneurs and informal innovators are quietly bending global technologies to local priorities. The article does three things. First, it traces how older colonial and Cold War arrangements of control are being replayed in the digital era through undersea cables, cloud infrastructure, security partnerships and smart city deals with China, the United States, Europe, Russia, India, Turkey and the Gulf states. It describes this as a form of multi polar tech colonialism that plays out very concretely in urban Africa. Second, the chapter shows how African actors push back, using indigenous innovation, city level experimentation and emerging regional instruments such as the African Union digital strategy and the AfCFTA digital trade protocol to reclaim some room for manoeuvre. Third, it sketches three possible futures for the continent: deepened dependence, transactional pluralism and a slower, harder path toward technological sovereignty built around public digital infrastructure, regional regulation and local capital. The core claim is that Africa is already negotiating a messy middle ground, and that the real policy question is how to tilt that middle toward genuine digital self determination rather than a more complex form of dependence