This is a blog about Creative Media Award recipient Esther Mwema and her project Afro-Grids.

(ZAMBIA | FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2022) — “African storytelling has been used to interpret the universe, resolve natural and physical phenomena, teach morals, maintain cultural values, pass on methods of survival, and to praise God.”

—Ngugi wa Thiong'o 1986, Vambe. 2001, Utley 2008, Kunene 2012

Esther Mwema is using African Folklore and Afrofuturism in a new way: to document and bring to light digital colonialism. Mwema’s Afro-Grids is one of Mozilla’s 2022 Creative Media Awards which support people and projects to reimagine the way data is governed.

With this work, Mwema, an expert in internet governance with a decade of experience working at the grassroots and also for organizations like the United Nations, “interrogates the relationship between big tech and internet infrastructure as a new form of digital colonialism and examines the role it plays in the continent’s digital divide.”

A three-part project, Afro-Grids takes the form of an animated Afrofuturistic book (and live-read) titled Bones of the Sea (BOTS); a study guide explaining digital colonialism using the Equiano and 2Africa undersea cable projects by Google and Meta respectively as case studies; and lastly, a call-to-action for individuals to imagine and contribute stories and alternative visions that will help shape a decolonised digital future for Africa.

“This methodology was quite important for me, because I believe that from the African context, storytelling has been a core part of how we understand the world and plays an important role in how we shape our future and pass down wisdom,” says Mwema.

This methodology was quite important for me, because I believe that from the African context, storytelling has been a core part of how we understand the world and plays an important role in how we shape our future and pass down wisdom

Esther Mwema, Creative Media Awardee

“Bones of the Sea,” the story book, tells the story of a community disrupted by the arrival of a portal that causes fear, curiosity and suspicion. A metaphor for a digital disruption, the story unpacks the nuanced complexities of what happens when people are invaded by a new technology that disrupts their socio-political life, upends old knowledge and replaces it with a profit-driven model that becomes a catalyst for deepening inequality, causing chaos and the death of what once was.

This “invasion” of communities is what Mwema is passionate about when it comes to Africa’s digital future. She worries about a lack of participation for citizens and smaller tech communities.

“I'm not looking for saviors, but rather working in a collaborative manner that preserves the dignity of our continent and its rich and diverse culture, history and contribution. The African continent, in its diversity and complexities, still exercises a lot of power or control over what happens in digital governance,” says Mwema.

Mwema adds: “Given that the internet is becoming a core part of our public life, we, as a continent, need to make decisions for our own future. Otherwise it will lead to our economy, social, political, and livelihoods being determined by big tech companies. And that's really why this project is very important to me as a creative person, as an artist, and also as an internet governance expert.”

The handbook, the second part of Mwema’s project, seeks to raise awareness around the Equiano and 2Africa undersea cable projects set to be completed at the end 2022 and 2024 respectively.

The African continent, in its diversity and complexities, still exercises a lot of power or control over what happens in digital governance.

Esther Mwema, Creative Media Awardee

As reported by Rest of World, Equiano and 2Africa are major undertakings by Google and Meta, respectively, to connect massive undersea cables to Africa that will bring about twenty times the current connectivity capacity to the continent. While these projects are being advanced under the guise of the public good, “they will also place an unprecedented level of control in the hands of the U.S.-based tech giants,” Rest of World reports.

Mwema agrees that this “unprecedented control” is dangerous and something to be questioned and challenged. Furthermore, her concerns extend to the lack of transparency and accountability in the manner with which these undersea cable projects are advanced.

Says Mwema: “Google and Meta are working with a local partner or a local fiber or telco company. And those telco companies will have to pay Google and/or Facebook to connect. So it's the customers on the African continent who will ultimately be paying that price. These undersea cables are not some sort of goodwill by these giant companies who are looking for more digital space to colonize. Nobody knows what agreements are being made due to the secrecy surrounding these projects, and there appears to be no stakeholder engagement. The communities that are supposedly being connected have not been included in the conversation. Nobody knows what is in the paperwork.”

These undersea cables are not some sort of goodwill by these giant companies who are looking for more digital space to colonize.

Esther Mwema, Creative Media Awardee

Not only are these projects leaving African communities out of the conversation, but Mwema also questions the appropriation of Africa’s monumental figures by using a name like Equiano, who was enslaved in the 18th century and later became a pioneering abolitionist and writer.

Through the call-to-action, the third part of the project, Mwema hopes to encourage stories and new imaginations for a decolonised digital Africa.

Mwema elaborates, “That's why I've used Afrofuturism and African folklore as a methodology, because it's about allowing us the opportunity to imagine our own digital future without big tech coming and determining what our digital landscape looks like. And I think that's a very urgent need.”

AfroGrids is available on www.afrogrids.com.