The Postdigital Learning Spaces of Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa

Whilst the postdigital is a stimulating and useful concept, on closer inspection it is a concept that grows out of specific metropolitan and industrial settings of the connected Global North. To have a wider relevance to those communities at the margins, and beyond the margins of these settings, it is necessary to explore the assumptions that underpin accounts of the postdigital. This should, we hope, allow us to reformulate the postdigital in a more inclusive and more useful manner. We must however, unpack definitions and assumptions, including that of the postdigital itself. In looking beyond the ‘developed’ Global North, many of these assumptions must be cast aside. To work within a more manageable scope we then look specifically at Africa, and impressionistically at characteristics dramatically different from those at work in the postdigital heartlands, explaining in part why nothing can be taken for granted. As with other regions of the world, we see the big sweeps of broad historical and geographical trends, and we see haphazard perturbations, but both are manifest in very different ways from what we see in the industrially ‘developed’ Global North. The sweeps are troubled by unpredicted perturbations, including ever more powerful artificial intelligence; decolonisation now touching digital technology, and the lingering global pandemic. These all impact on the postdigital learning spaces in Africa. The hope is, however, that including them all brings us nearer to a more inclusive and critical understanding of the postdigital.