African Digital Cultures

Drawing from Kenya to South Africa, Namibia to Nigeria, Malawi to Zimbabwe, this edited collection explores how digital platforms (text, audio, image and video-oriented) have reconfigured cultural production, distribution, consumption, and monetization in Africa.

The book foregrounds contemporary African perspectives on how ordinary people and social media influencers are implicated in the platformization of cultural production. It calls attention to the myriad ways in which digital Africans are using restricted access to the digital to produce, distribute, circulate, and monetize cultural content at the margins of surveillance capitalism.

This volume highlights how Africans are harnessing the potential of the digital in preserving, showcasing, performing, monetizing and platforming their own cultures. The major highlight of this book is the innovative and creative ways in which the young and old Africans are using popular digital technologies for a wide range of cultural productions.

Admire Mare is a Full Professor and Head of Department: Communication and Media Studies at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include analyzing the complex and messy intersections between technology and society, specifically focusing on global digital journalism studies, and global digital platform studies.

Oswelled Ureke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests lie in screen media, cultural studies and political economy of the media. He holds a PhD in Cultural and Media Studies from University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.