Adapting Digital Storytelling Methods to African Contexts: Insights from the Utaifa Project

This article is drawn from a larger action research study that seeks to explore the extent to which “ordinary” citizens, on the margins, can actively access and use digital platforms for self-expression and self-representation. This paper, in particular, discusses insights gleaned from a collaborative participatory research project, with a focus group from the Abakuria community in Kenya, on adapting digital storytelling as a research method for an African context. Two overarching strands inform this work. The first is epistemic, guided by critical discourses on African folklore and African ontologies on personhood. Here, works by Bukenya, Finnegan, Courlander, Mbiti, Menkiti, Nyamnjoh and Wiredu, among others, provide a launching pad for the engagement. The argument is that an iteration of digital storytelling that is relevant and effective in an African context needs anchoring on an episteme that is intrinsically African. The second strand focuses on the process that this adaptation takes. Here, Participatory Action Research principles and processes are a central cog. The assertion is that an iteration of digital storytelling that is appropriate and effective for an African context needs to be participatory, emancipatory, transformative, self-critical and empowering, tenets encapsulated in Participatory Action Research.