ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Africa’s emerging digital communication practices as a gateway towards analysing the complexities and contradictions of the digital ecosystem in local contexts. The proliferation of, for example, citizen journalism spaces, the use of memes as activist tools in repressive African societies, and the attempts towards moving from analogue to digital production in several countries on the continent are testaments to the ways in which digital technology in Africa is challenging legacy media such as newspapers, television and radio. The importance of relationships and community is optimally illustrated by Mankosi in South Africa and Macha in Zambia. Mankosi is a remote rural community in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. The growth of the digital economy in the past two decades has brought about profound changes to information and communication technologies, and to how workers and organisations interact in the digital space.
