By Toyin Falola

I am impressed by the success of Mount Kenya University and the opportunity it offers to deliver this distinguished lecture on July 18, 2025. I speak to you today with moral necessity and honor on a topic that resides at the intersection of technology, history, identity, and the struggles of Africa. Today’s topic, “The Power of Digital Technology in Shaping Africa’s Historical and Political Dialogues,” permits us to have deep thoughts on the ever-changing forces that affect our citizenship, governance, and our consciousness in the Digital Age.

We must first come to terms with the fact that Africa is currently experiencing a profound technological metamorphosis. This is a revolution of imagination, memory, tools, and devices. Africa has reached an era where digital technology is fast becoming a mirror to reflect its past and a chisel to carve its future. In the realm of historical documentation and political debates, digital platforms have given rise to new forms of redefinition, participation, and resistance.

In my book, Citizenship and the Diaspora in the Digital Age: Farooq Kperogi and the Virtual Community, I tried to explain how African citizens, especially those in the diaspora, have employed digital technologies as tools of empowerment and dissent. Using the muscular and intense weekly essays of Professor Farooq Kperogi, I made explanations on how digital citizenship has enabled the critique of dictatorships and the quest for democratic accountability through blogs and social commentary. To this end, the internet becomes more than a platform; it transforms into a battlefield for political agency and a contest of historical memory. This virtual space allows Africans as content creators, public truth custodians, and history makers to turn down the roles of passive recipients of imposed narratives.

It would not be far from the truth to state that digital technology has become central to the selection of the medium of knowledge dissemination, the selection of public voices, and whose history is preserved. An average African, whether in Lagos or Accra in Africa, or far from the motherland in places like London or Atlanta, can now participate in the national debates that were once reserved for the political elites as the social media platforms and blogs have been transforms to political terrains.

My essay, “Technology, Technical Education, Culture, and Society,”brings me to a deeper reflection. In Africa, our cultural values and historical past cannot be separated from technology, as every act of our digital participation remains grounded in our cultures. The infusion of our indigenous languages in WhatsApp broadcasts, the oral tradition, and folk dances broadcasted on YouTube channels are examples of how the African culture is being preserved and disseminated through technology. Technology is about devices as it is about identity. It plays the role of reconnecting Africans with the indigenous roots that colonialism set out to disconnect.

However, the digital transformation also has its downsides. I have examined how technology can become a tool of repression, surveillance, and control by foreign states in “Counterterrorism, Technology and Development in Africa.” A two-edged sword, tools that can be employed for our liberation can also be employed for our subjugation. When technologies like drones and Artificial Intelligence are deployed toward protection, but mostly at the expense of civil rights and sovereignty of the state, the owners of these technologies, the controllers of their data, and the ones in whose interest they act become the supreme power.

It is in this scene that political stakes become more urgent in digital technology. These tools are used to surveil elections, protest movements, and to mobilize for politics, thereby reshaping the African political scene. My lecture on “Power, Politics, and Development in Africa”projects how African youths have been utilizing their smartphones, the internet, and social media platforms to challenge the status quo. Technology is becoming an aid for the marginalized voices in the African society as seen during the EndSARS protests in Nigeria, the FeesMustFall movement in South Africa, and the RutoMustGo protest in Kenya, among other protests. Technology gave opportunity for the real-time mobilization, exposure of dictatorship and human rights violations, and global solidarity.

Looking away from the upsides of the digital transformations, we must also look at the downsides, like the manipulation of algorithms, the intentional spread of fake news, and the shutdown of the internet by governments, among others. We need to make technology a servant of liberty and not a tool to promote neocolonization. There should be proper digital education, investments must be made in the digital sector, there should be the creation of ethical frameworks, and the development of robust digital governance.

We must take cognizance of the fact that technological tools are not culturally neutral. The exclusion of African languages from digital training models and the absence of African views from the ethics of Artificial intelligence will put Africa at the same risk of marginalization experienced by the continent during the colonial era. Currently, there is a scramble for Africa, but now, African data is the goal and not land.

I have stated at the “Artificial Intelligence and African Future” panel that Africa must move away from the position of consumer of digital products to that of producers, regulators, and visionaries of Africa’s technological future. Africa must indigenize technology, ensure that the African philosophy, communal values, and epistemologies and infused into digital systems. Once such is actualized, we can thereafter say that Africa is not only surviving but flourishing in the digital age.

Digital technology gives us the capacity to restore lost histories, digitize the records once locked up in imperial vaults, record oral traditions and distribute them to generations to come, and even reconnect diasporan Africans to their homeland origins through genetic technologies and virtual reality. The drum that is beat in the village square can now be heard in cyberspace, as we are now witnessing the convergence of the past and the future.

Also, technology creates new teaching and learning possibilities. African academic institutions across all levels must adapt an African-centered digital knowledge to their curriculum. The teachers must encourage digital inquiries, and the students must be equipped with technical skills grounded in ethics, social justice, and history.

In conclusion, digital technology in Africa offers the opportunity to reshape our history, its political debates, and reclaim a platform in a world that marginalizes it. The power of technology in Africa is real, as it is revolutionary and complicated. That is why it must be responsibly surveilled with wisdom so that it does not morph into a tool to subjugate or marginalize Africa, but a tool to be employed in the fight for Africa’s freedom and dignity.

As we forge ahead, let us not forget that technology is never neutral. It is infused with the values and visions of the individuals who design and deploy it. Our challenge is not just to embrace technology, but to bend it to our realities, to shape it with our humanity, and to use it for justice. Let us therefore build such a future where the digital is a site of memory, a tool of resistance, and a platform of African renaissance.

 I thank the organizers, Professor K. Mutundu, the Dean of the School of Social Sciences, assisted by Dr. M. Wamalwa, Head of Psychology, and Dr. Johnson Odera Oyugi, of the Department of Humanities. Ms Grace Nyakio rendered a beautiful song. Professor Mary Mugwe Chui handled her role as the MC with skill and elegance.

Thank you!