The youth of sub-Saharan Africa are the subject of much attention these days, being typically portrayed as being unemployed and in need of external support and/or as potential perpetrators of violence. It is refreshing, therefore, to come across a book that, according to its title, focuses on young people in the very different context of the internet cafes of urban Ghana.

The book is written from the perspective of science and technology studies with the explicit aim of filling the gap between studies of global transitions and inequality in a digital age, and more localised accounts of the uptake of these technologies. The author is keen to demonstrate how ‘the meanings and uses of a machine or system are not predetermined by the form alone but come to be understood in distinctive ways by different user populations and other relevant groups’ (p. 6). The book is based on extensive fieldwork conducted primarily in 2004/2005 in Accra but with a couple of subsequent visits, the latest being in 2010. Consequently, the author is able to present a perspective on the rapidly changing internet cafe scene along with some fascinating narratives of young people's uses of the internet.

In the first half of the book (chapters 2, 3 and 4), the focus is on how the youth of Accra use, and are perceived as users of, internet cafes. Spending time in an internet cafe is seen by many of these young people not only as a form of leisure but more essentially as a potential source of income, either in the form of obtaining a spouse/sponsor or through internet scams. The author convincingly demonstrates how young people continue in these endeavours, despite an apparent lack of success, in the belief that it is possible to achieve their goals. I found these to be the strongest and most enjoyable chapters in the book.

Despite its title, in the subsequent chapters (5, 6 and 7) the focus of the book moves away from internet cafes to religious spaces, a regional conference of the World Summit on the Information Society, and the importing and disposal of second-hand computers. The link between these chapters, and to the focus on youth and internet cafes, is tenuous at best and rather forced at times. Especially in these latter chapters, there is an overreliance on anecdotal evidence and some rather sweeping, and even misleading, claims are made. For example, the author claims that there is a ‘general division between urban and rural populations’ (p. 179) despite extensive evidence to the contrary (for a recent example which illustrates the mobility of youth between urban and rural areas of Ghana see Olwig & Gough Reference Olwig and Gough2013). And although there is a general tendency for scholars to read within disciplines, it is rather surprising that there is no reference to the work of the geographer Thilde Langevang who has published numerous articles on youth in Accra (for example, Langevang Reference Langevang2008a, Reference Langevang2008b).

In spite of these reservations, overall the book does achieve its aim to examine from a range of angles the transecting local and global processes that materialise the internet in Accra, and would have benefited from a title that better reflects its content. It should be of interest to scholars from a range of disciplines who research youth in sub-Saharan Africa and those who study the ways in which the internet is used and perceived.