week 11 - Critical Reflection on "Making a Feminist Internet in Africa" Through a Decolonial Lens.
published by Thoriso Samson on
Sheena Magenya's article on GenderIT.org in 2020 is a vision of an African feminist internet that subverts the reproduction of offline injustices online. Read from a decolonial perspective, her work is a challenge to digital coloniality, epistemic injustice, and colonial power relations embedded within technology. Magenya argues that even when framed as neutral, the internet reproduces the prevailing oppressions for African women, LGBTIQA people, and persons with disability.
This remains the case in decolonial views of digital spaces as sites of struggle where coloniality of power determines access and visibility. Her critique of virtual meetings replacing in-person meetings highlights how technological infrastructure disparities in Africa are not only "digital divides" but articulations of colonial resource extraction and unequal development. If internet access fails to account for material barriers like cost and access to devices, it is yet another site of epistemic extractivism that redoubles colonial dependencies. This results in a strange dynamic where African stories and knowledge are shared globally with minimal African input, potentially leading to biases or misrepresentations due to a lack of deep understanding of the lived experiences of local communities.
The focus of the article on the "Making a Feminist Internet in Africa" (MFIAfrica) meeting shows collective action as epistemic resistance. These African feminists, artists, and activists are the embodiment of what decolonial theorists call "epistemic disobedience" by turning dominant narratives upside down. Their vision of a diverse internet that prioritises diversity, safety, and joy aligns with the decolonial concept of pluriversality; many worlds coexisting against Eurocentric digital modernity.
However, social media platforms and online discussion forums where these conversations are likely to take place, such as Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube, reveal a tension between Magenya's call for epistemic justice and the algorithmic coloniality of these platforms. While Magenya envisions African feminists creating body-positive content, queer narratives, and alternative stories, the algorithmic prioritisation of Western-centric content often sidelines such nuanced contributions. This problematic dynamic complicates the realisation of a decolonised internet, as even when diverse voices are present, their reach is curtailed by engagement-driven algorithms that favor perspectives aligning with colonial power structures.
Furthermore, Magenya's critique of Africa's portrayal as a passive recipient of technology, rather than an innovator, directly confronts technological determinism and the coloniality of knowledge in digital discourse. She challenges the "single story" narrative that frames African innovation as merely responsive to crises like famine or disease, rather than creative or playful - a narrative that perpetuates what decolonial scholars would identify as cognitive injustice, denying the legitimacy of African technological epistemologies. This perspective deeply resonates with my framework's emphasis on decolonising technology, which requires recognising African technological sovereignty and epistemic contributions beyond Western frameworks of "development" or "progress."
Nevertheless, platforms like YouTube and Twitter, while offering broad reach, often reproduce what could be termed "algorithmic imperialism" - encoded preferences for dominant cultural expressions and epistemologies. For example, the roughly even gender split in South African social media users suggests potential for equitable representation, but as the context notes, equitable exposure is not guaranteed. African feminist content risks being buried under algorithmically favored content that perpetuates colonial imaginaries, reinforcing the very "white tide" Magenya seeks to shift. Additionally, the article highlights the internet as a site of both epistemic violence and resistance.
Magenya notes the prevalence of online gender-based violence and the lack of legal recourse in many African countries, which aligns with a decolonial understanding of digital spaces as extensions of what Achille Mbembe terms "necropolitics" - systems that determine which bodies and expressions thrive online and which are rendered vulnerable. Her call for African feminists to take up space, through storytelling, body-positive content, and cultural expression, positions the internet as a driving force for epistemic justice and digital sovereignty.
Magenya's contention that Africa is portrayed as a reactive technology taker rather than a maker contradicts technological determinism and coloniality of knowledge. She resists the "single story" discourse that positions African innovation as reactive and mere crisis-solving rather than being creative or playful, a discourse that solidifies cognitive injustice by dismissing African technological epistemologies as illegitimate. That perspective aligns well with decolonising technology, and therefore, there is a requirement to recognise African technological sovereignty from Western logics of "development." The article highlights the internet as a site of both epistemic violence and counter-resistance Magenya addresses the endemic character of online gender violence and poor legal safeguards, and it aligns with seeing online sites as an extension of "necropolitics", systems that determine whose expressions make it online and whose are in jeopardy. Her appeal to African feminists to occupy digital space through narrative and cultural production puts the internet at the forefront of epistemic justice and digital sovereignty. Nonetheless, reflecting on platform dynamics, I question how feasible this reclamation of digital space is when echo chambers like Tumblr limit exposure to diverse audiences, and broader platforms like Twitter amplify voices that align with colonial epistemologies.
The algorithmic environment can distort feminist messages, reducing complex decolonial narratives to clickable soundbites or sidelining them entirely. This tension suggests that achieving Magenya's feminist internet requires not only more voices but also decolonial praxis that transforms platform governance and algorithmic design at fundamental levels. Magenya's focus on a lively internet as a place of play defies the utilitarian perspective of technology in Africa, a perspective based on colonial accounts of African technological use as necessarily developmental, not creative. This is consistent with the construction of "otherwise" digital worlds outside colonial classifications.
However, structural expressions of digital coloniality, algorithmic imperialism, uneven access, and platform monopolies create major obstacles to making this idea a reality. In conclusion, while Magenya offers an empowering platform towards decolonising the internet with African feminist voices, coloniality embedded within digital infrastructures renders its accomplishment quite challenging if not implausible without centering the digital landscape to cater towards African audiences and a more neutral algorithm that caters to opposing viewpoints on social media platforms, within reason of course, to facilitate further constructive debates.