Digital Platforms and Africa’s Creative Industries.

As we morph into digital citizenship, the new world order and its structural controls are taking different dimensions. In this digital environment, we are digitised, aggregated, reconfigured, and sold as new products back to us. People from the Global South are active participants in the digital hemisphere. Their participatory position is, however, subject to debate. We can argue that participation in digital platforms is like the American melting pot where cultures and people converge. The big question is, whose pot is melting the rest of society? African countries are active participants, but have we a false sense of digital participation simply because we are digitally present?

Is digital platform the next frontier in the exploitation and subjugation of Africa? Have digital algorithms been designed to position the continent into consumer culture? Does the continent have sovereignty over its creative outputs, or is the digital platform the latest scramble for Africa? I was privileged to raise these issues as Keynote speakers at the 2022 Arts Research Kaleidoscope conference at the Durban University of Technology South Africa.