Digital Communications at Crossroads in Africa

Digital communication as it is practiced in Africa today is at a crossroad. This edited collection takes that crossroad as its starting point, as it both examines the complicated present and looks to the uncertain future of African communication systems. Contributing authors explore how western digital communication systems have proliferated in the African communication landscape, and argue that rich and long-cherished African forms of communal, in-person communication have been increasingly abandoned in favor of assimilation to western digital norms. As a result, future generations of Africans born on the continent and abroad may never recognize and appreciate African systems of communications.

Acknowledging that globalized digital communication systems are here to stay, the volume contends that in order to comprehend the past, present, and future of African communications, scholars need to decolonize their approach to teaching and consuming mediated and in-person communications on the African continent and abroad.

Addresses the impact and innovative adoption of digital communication in the lives of Africans Argues that in order to decolonize the African new media use and consumption, a complete paradigm shift in the approach to digital forms of communications is needed Asks whether cultural and communicative hybridization from the top bottom the way forward, or the horizontalization of western and African communicative forms

Auteur

Kehbuma Langmia is a Fullbright Scholar/Professor and Chair in the Department of Strategic, Legal and Management Communication, School of Communications, Howard University, USA. Since earning his PhD in Mass Communications and Media Studies from Howard University in 2006, he has over 22 publications in the form of books, book chapters and research articles in prominent national and international journals.
Agnes Lucy Lando is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Daystar University, Kenya. She obtained her PhD in Social Communication from The Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, in 2008. In October 2016, Lando became the first African elected Board Member-at-Large of International Communication Association (ICA). Lando has publications in Communication Ethics, Higher Education in Africa, The Critical Role of Crisis Communication Plan in Corporations' Crises Preparedness, Communication Theory, Rumours on Social Media; and Kenya's subtle 2013 Post-Election Violence. She is 2013 George Gerbner Excellence Award recipient.

Contributors:Kajsa Hallberg Adu, Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden
Shamilla Amulega, Howard University, USA

M'Bawine Atintande, University of Ghana, Ghana

Laban P. Ayiro, Daystar University, Kenya

Abdul Karim Bangura, American University, USA
Mohamed Saliou Camara, Howard University, USA
Bala A. Musa, Azusa Pacific University, USA
Chuka Onwumechili, Howard University, USA

Contenu

1. Seshu nu per nkh : The Ancient Kemetian Genesis of Digital Communication - Abdul Karim Bangura.- 2. Digital Communications: Colonization or Rationalization? - Chuka Onwumechili and Shamilla Amulega.- 3. Digital Communication in Africa at Crossroads: From Physical Exploitation in the Past to Virtual Dominance Now - M'Bawine Atintande.- 4. Africa at Development Policy and Practice Crossroads in the Digital Era: Navigating Decolonization and Glocalization - Bala A. Musa.- 5. Pax-Africana versus Western Digi-Culturalism: An Ethnomethodological Study of Selected Mobile African Apps - Kehbuma Langmia.- 6. Africans and Digital Communication at Crossroads: Rethinking Existing Decolonial Paradigms
   • Agnes Lucy Lando.- 7. African Communication Paradigms between Yesterday and Tomorrow: Preserving and Enhancing Africanity in the Digital Age
     • Mohammed Saliou Camara.- 8. Digital Communication Tools in the Classroom as a Decolonial Solution: Pedagogical Experiments from Ashesi University in Ghana - Kajsa Hallberg Adu.