A new open access book with a chapter on Zambia written by Dr. Sam Phiri from the University of Zambia and Kiss Abraham from NewZambian “Digital Citizenship in Africa: Technologies of Agency and Repression” explores African citizen’s use of tech tools to freely participate in social, economic, and political life despite a wider context of growing repression and digital authoritarianism.
Tanja Bosch co-author of the book and Associate Professsor of Media and Film Studies at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), says, “Simply put, digital citizenship is the use of mobile and internet technologies to participate in civic and political life”. Since the Arab Spring, African citizens have made increasingly creative use of digital tools to ensure that marginalised voices are heard, and to demand for the rights they are entitled to in law: to freely associate, and to express opinions online without fear of violence or arrest.
With contributions from scholars across the continent, Digital Citizenship in Africa illustrates how citizens have been using social media to run hashtag campaigns and VPNs, encryption and privacy protecting browsers to resist limits on their rights to privacy and political speech.
The Zambia chapter documents citizen hacking and a digital “bush protest”: unable to safely protest in the streets young activists took their campaigns online and broadcast their message from a secret rural location.
The authors include Institute of Development Studies (UK) alumni Sandra Ajaja (writing about feminist online activism in Nigeria), Mavis Elias (writing about digital campaigns to hold politicians accountable in Namibia) and Ayobami Ojebode, Babtunde Ojebuyi, Oyewole Olapado and Marjoke Oosterom (writing about the campaign to end police brutality in Nigeria. The authors list includes activists who have personally faced consequences of repressive digital authoritarianism such as Atnaf Brhane, a digital rights activist based in Ethiopia who co-founded the blogging collective Zone9 Bloggers and was imprisoned for 18 months for his online activism.
The authors argue for an understanding of digital citizenship as an active process in which citizens use mobile and internet technologies to take part in the social, economic, and political life of communities of which they are a part. Each chapter analyses a different episode of active digital citizenship, investigating how technologies are being used both positively by citizens to expand democratic space online and negatively by states to shrink or shut down that civic space.
This book, along with the next two in the series “Digital Disinformation in Africa” and “Digital Surveillance in Africa”, aim to expand understanding of the vast and growing arsenal of tech tools, tactics and techniques now being deployed both by citizens and by repressive governments to open and close democratic space online.
The final chapter by Nanjala Nyabola explores how Swahili-speaking activists in East Africa – whose opportunities for active citizenship are limited by the domination of colonial languages – create new slang to express themselves more effectively online. In each chapter authors show how positive examples of digital citizenship are limited and constrained by new forms of digital authoritarianism: internet shutdowns, repressive laws, and by state surveillance and disinformation. The is the first collection edition by African scholars of case studies on digital citizenship from across the continent . It aims to be of relevance to and build bridges between media studies, citizenship studies, development studies and African studies.
Tony Roberts, co-author and Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (UK) said: “This book documents a wide range of creative and dynamic use of digital technologies to open democratic space online, give voice to issues ignored by mainstream media and political parties, and challenge the status quo. The positive openings that digital citizenship delivers are constantly constrained by new practices of digital authoritarianism and surveillance capitalism. The book shows that despite these constraints citizens continue to be innovative in their adoption of digital technologies to exercise, defend, and expand their digital rights”.
Marjoke Oosterom, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development studies said: “There is very little research on digital citizenship in Africa and this leaves open important questions about how the widespread use of digital technologies is affecting the nature of African citizenship, how it is enhancing or impending engagement in different forms of citizenship and the extent to which it amplifies the power of citizens, the state and private companies.”
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