[Commlist] CfP: Symposium: Cultures of Platformisation in Africa

Call for Presentations

Symposium: Cultures of Platformisation in Africa

Africa’s digital landscape is expanding and rapidly changing. In this 
moment, digital platforms– and the products, services, communication, 
and networking they offer–significantly shape everyday economic, social, 
and political life on the continent. This digital landscape is 
underpinned by a combination of economic/financial, political and 
cultural logics and practices, both global and local.

Platforms promise business success, consumer satisfaction, 
entrepreneurial opportunities, innovations, and social transformation, 
including new forms of collective connection and action. Platforms are 
also linked to scams, debt, data misuse, violence, worker exploitation, 
censorship, and mental ill-health. The merits and harms of platforms are 
contested across the continent. For example, platforms have been 
celebrated as accelerators of local and regional innovation and as 
vehicles of sovereignty projects. They have also been critiqued as 
replicators of colonial circuits of wealth and power that reinforce 
historical, and perhaps racialised, inequities.

As platforms–and platform-based firms and entrepreneurs–further extend 
their business models into the social fabric of those living on the 
continent, states deliberate the appropriate policy environment that 
will drive platforms to better balance innovation and security, and 
citizen, corporate, and state interests. Meanwhile, individuals enact 
digital practices that blend modernity and tradition in ways that can 
both reproduce and resist the asymmetries of platform capitalism.

Against this background, we take stock of accelerating and expansive 
platformisation in Africa. University of Leeds and Boston University 
invite presentations for a hybrid interdisciplinary symposium that seeks 
productive dialogue about the broad social and cultural properties and 
impacts of platforms and platformisation in Africa.

There are provisional plans for a publication resulting from this symposium.

Symposium Date: Friday, 13 March 2026

Location: University of Leeds campus and online (Zoom)

Presentation topics could include:

  *
    The making and embedding of digital platforms
  *
    Cultures of platforms
  *
    The role of local knowledge, institutions, agencies and practices
  *
    New professions, livelihoods, identities, and forms of expertise
  *
    Everyday life of platform workers and platform-oriented professions
  *
    Platforms and corporate culture
  *
    Cultures of workplaces, worker (self) exploitation and organisation
  *
    Influencers
  *
    Self-help groups, including crowdfunding and savings groups
  *
    Psychological dynamics of platform participation
  *
    Successes and harms of platform participation
  *
    Social impact and implications of platform-based services (e.g. 24/7
    marketing; intensive platform use; safety of ride-sharing services;
    expanded commercialisation; ideas of success/good life)
  *
    Platforms and cultural life, popular culture and entertainment, and
    religion
  *
    Impact on public communication and discourse
  *
    Projection of platforms in Africa
  *
    Platforms and health-seeking behaviours
  *
    Remaking cities and reshaping public space
  *
    Platform policy, politics, and regulation (e.g. relationship between
    platforms and the state)
  *
    Alternatives and resistance to platforms in Africa


Submitting a proposal

To submit your proposal, please include:

  *
    Title of presentation
  *
    Abstract of no more than 300 words
  *
    Name and email address of presenter(s)


Submit proposal to: (platforms.africa /at/ leeds.ac.uk)

There is no cost to participate.  Non-presenting participants may 
request access at the email address above. Organisers may be required to 
limit the number of in-person and online participants.

Deadline for submissions: 6 February 2026

Organising Committee

Leah Komen, Daystar University
Cathleen LeGrand, University of Leeds
Winston Mano, University of Westminster
Chris Paterson, University of Leeds
Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Boston University
Jörg Wiegratz, University of Leeds


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