My work over the last twenty years has explored how the smart city idea lands in complex urban environments. Informed by postcolonial science and technology studies, research in a diverse range of urban environments in Africa and elsewhere shows that the nexus between urban livelihoods, technology appropriation and place making is a iterative, socio-technical process that is hybrid in nature, rather than driven by technology alone. In this presentation I share this trajectory with an emphasis on more recent work on platforms and data forms that are shaping cities in the South and elsewhere.