African Digital Cultures (Digital Studies)

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.

This 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, digital infrastructures, and artificial intelligence, 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.

James Yékú teaches African literature and postcolonial digital humanities at the University of Kansas. His work sits at the intersection of African cultural production and digital humanities, and he is the author of Cultural Netizenship: Social Media, Popular Culture, and Performance in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2022) and The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture (Michigan State University Press, 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.