SESSION 24

YOUTH AND DIGITAL CULTURES IN URBAN AFRICA

African cities are growing younger and youth are tech savvy in unprecedented ways. Technologies fundamentally shape urban life, from large-scale ICT infrastructure to mobile phones in back pockets. The ways in which young people shape their lives is increasingly mediated by technology. Young people are coordinating their work (formal jobs and informal hustles alike), arranging their social and cultural lives, and organising their political activities through various digital platforms, within digitised industries, and enabled by emergent technologies - some borrowed, some made, some tinkered with. Technology also plays a role in urban surveillance, in some cases more dangerous than others, depending on who you are and where you live. In order to unpack these socio-technical relations, this session invites contributions from scholars and/or practitioners working at the intersection of youth, digital cultures and African cities.

We are particularly interested in exploring how creative practice (mapping, visual arts, music, serious gaming etc), and techno-feminist and queer approaches to southern urban technological and youth studies are invigorating a field that is often dominated by techno-optimist or techno-pessimist extremes.

This session asks:

• How are young people organising urban life (socially, culturally, politically, economically, etc) through technology?
• How can socio-technical studies from the global South challenge and enliven digital cities discourses?
• How can techno-feminist and queer approaches invigorate urban theory and practice?
• In what ways can creative methods offer more meaningful insight into digital life in urban Africa?

• Upload your abstract for Session 24