Digital citizenship in Africa
Susan Iris Brokensha, Eduan Kotzé, Burgert Senekal · 2023
The notion of “digital citizenship” is constantly evolving and in this chapter is conceptualised as contested in the context of the AI ecosystem in Africa, intersecting as it does with structural factors and dynamics that significantly hinder its potential to thrive. Nevertheless, the chapter attempts to avoid framing digital citizenship solely in a negative sense to address a variety of problems. It is depicted instead as a notion that allows for advocacy, innovation, and social change. It also calls, among other things, for the nurturing of critical digital citizens through a decolonial lens in communities and societies, in research, and in education that not only encourages well-reasoned analyses of AI’s convergences with unequal social, political, and economic landscapes on the continent but also recognises the prominent position that indigenous knowledge systems should enjoy to ensure that AI’s design and deployment are both localised and relevant to a given region’s realities. How digital citizens can reconcile indigenous knowledge systems and Western epistemologies in the context of AI research is briefly addressed by considering the notion of citizen science, which itself is a highly contested concept.