Analyzing the innovative and popular uses of digital media technologies across many African countries, African Digital Cultures reveals how digitization, through its inherent computational and epistemological logics, is deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people, producing new structures of feeling and new possibilities for political participation, cultural expression, and creative agency.
The book grapples with the affective elements of mediatized social relations and consciousness, as platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok increasingly inform the construction of diverse kinds of publics - from the religious and political to the sexual and the literary. Focusing on the creative and disruptive uses of social media platforms, financial technologies, and digital infrastructures, this collection brings together scholars whose work challenges the notion of Africa as a place of technological lack, underscoring the rich histories and contributions of the continent to global digital media.
This interdisciplinary volume offers an essential and decolonizing understanding of digital media cultures and histories from an African perspective.
List of Contributors
African Digital Cultures: Introduction
James Yékú and Leah Junck
Part 1: Infrastructures
Chapter 1: Big Auntie Like Me: The Humor of the Digital Divide
Adwoa A. Opoku-Agyemang
Chapter 2: Youth as Digital Infrastructure: Radical Openings, Internet
Shutdowns, and Forward Momentums
Clovis Bergere
Chapter 3: Digital Citizens of an Analog State: Infrastructure and Epistemic
Closures in Nigeria
James Yékú
Chapter 4: Counting Water for an African future? Smart Water Billing in South
Africa
Ina Dietzsch and Amber Abrams
Part 2: Platforms
Chapter 5: Technologies of Capture: From the Slave Ship to Instagram
Ejiofor Ugwu
Chapter 6: Podcasts and Emerging Listenerships in Kenya
Dina Ligaga
Chapter 7: Undisciplining the Digital: Multimodal Poetry as Decolonial Method
in Koleka Putumas Hullo Bu-bye Koko Come In (2021)
Susanna Sacks
Chapter 8: Locating African Cultural Agency in the Global Digital Economy:
The Case of Music Platform Insider Activists
Jaana Serres
Chapter 9: Debating the Ethics of Ownership and Appropriation in Global
Digital Afrobeats Culture
Bakar Abdul-Rashid Jeduah & Tom Simmert
Chapter 10: Sharevangelism: Religion, Technology, and Platform Relations
Adunni Adelakun
Part 3: Publics
Chapter 11: I Dont Take Card: What Uber Drivers and Users in Ghana Can
Teach Us about Localizing Foreign Technology.
Elias Adanu and Stephen Dadugblor
Chapter 12: Digital Citizenship in Nigeria: Claims Making, Civic Engagement
and Social Justice Activism on X
Ochega Etu- Ataguba
Chapter 13: Voices of the Ordinary People in the Digital Era: Rebuttals to A
Presidents Facebook Eulogy
Selina Linda Mudavanhu
Chapter 14: Media Identities and Risks: Mobile Money and the Dilemmas of
Digital Exposure in Urban Cameroon
Primus M. Tazanu
Index
James Yékú teaches African literature and Postcolonial digital humanities at the University of Kansas, USA and is the author of The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture (2025).
Leah Junck is a Senior Researcher and Digital Anthropologist at the Global Center on AI Governance in South Africa. Her work explores how computational technologies shape human relationships, future imaginaries, and the interplay between personal tech experiences, structural frameworks, and public discourse.
