The Unmasking of Digital Media Juju in Africa: A Digi-Cultural Reflection

The African juju masquerades for the sole intent of displaying creativity using subterfuge. It is a form of displaying artistic African talent that stretches our imagination. The Western digital media, through virtuality and artificial intelligence (AI) has transcended the human mind through a “juju-like” creativity enraptured in invincibility that is not easily discernible by the human naked eye. This is similar to the skills of the juju man within the African cultural setting. Thus, unmasking these two “jujus” is the task of this paper. Digital media have maintained an omnipresence in the pockets and behavioral lifestyle of an average African today. Social media, for instance, have platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and most notably, WhatsApp that are pregnant with Western modes of socio-cultural lifestyles that have taken over most of the interhuman communication by Africans in Africa. Consequently, the African communication landscape in the quest to maintain presence in the global mediated space has proven beyond doubt that their erstwhile forms of communications whether digital or in-person are facing competition each passing day. Through the thematic analysis of extant literature on African-mediated landscape, this paper will portray in the Achebiana proverb that “he who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say, with certainty, where he dried his body.”