The Digitally Native Podcast with Fungai Machirori Fungai Machirori

In this podcast episode I am joined by Mark Kaigwa, a Kenyan digital entrepreneur and commentator. We talk through the history of Kenya's digital presence, which remains one of the most powerful on the African continent  and for which the nation has been popularly referred to as the Silicon Savannah. We also talk through the 2007 Kenyan elections, the emergence of Ushahidi and spaces of digital communality like the iHub and the renowned digital force that is Kenyans on Twitter, or #KOT. Beyond digitality, we look at other factors that facilitated Kenya's digital rise the early 2000s and 2010s.

In this second part of my interview with Professor Sean Jacobs, we explore more about the history of Africa Is a A Country, a blog promoting African thought leadership. We also delve into some narrative power dynamics about the platform, looking at why - for a long time - African diasporic voices dominated the platform's perspectives. 

Zimbabwean influencers can largely be categorised along two lines; political influencers who engage in activism and politics and entertainers who thrive on comedic humour and/ or controversy. In this week's episode, I explore an outlier influencer - the late public intellectual, Alex Magaisa - who found the sweet spot between academia, acclaim and simplicity. 

In this episode I interview Professor Sean Jacobs, founder of Africa Is A Country on the history of setting up this platform that has promoted pan-African digital intellectualism for over a decade. We talk through his impetus for setting up the platform as a South African given the often insular nature of South Africa’s content and knowledge production, and politics. We also talk about some precursors to digitality, like Dstv, which fomented inter-African cultural exchanges through the media.

Earlier this month, I moderated a session at the Internet Governance Forum - held in Kyoto, Japan - on African social media futures. My session panelists were Juilet Nanfuka who works with the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) and Tigist Shewarega of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). We covered a lot of interesting ground around social media use on the continent and policy implications thereof. 

In this week's podcast episode, I am joined by Sherylle Dass, the Regional Director of The Legal Resources Centre, to discuss a new initiative called The Global Coalition for Tech Justice. Launched on September 15, the Coalition will seek to hold big tech companies to account for the spread of online disinformation, hate speech and manipulation. We talk through the work the Coalition will do from a global south - or global majority - standpoint.