Contribution short abstract:

Digital activism by youth-led social movements has critiqued embedded systems of inequality in Ghana. This paper investigates how Ghanaian urban youth utilised social media platforms to mobilise for social justice, focusing on youth-led movements such as #JusticeForKaaka and #FixTheCountry.

Contribution long abstract:

Ghanaian youth, largely in urban settings, have leveraged digital platforms as critical tools for youth-led social movements, serving as spaces to amplify youth voices on socio-political issues such as gender and solidarity building. This paper examines how Ghanaian youth utilise social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and X to mobilise for social justice, focusing on youth-led movements such as #JusticeForKaaka and the #FixTheCountry campaigns. These solidarity movements depict how digital activism addresses rooted systems of inequality and intersecting issues of class and gender (Castells, 2015; Tufekci, 2017). This paper also examines the dynamics of intergenerational collaboration within these social movements. While the youth mobilise rapidly and enhance visibility by leveraging digital technologies, the older generation provides historical context and strategic depth, providing opportunities for solidarity building across divides (Honwana, 2019). This notwithstanding, tensions arise as a result of diverse approaches and priorities, especially when it comes to striking a balance between digital and offline mobilisation (Bennet and Segerberg, 2013). Deploying interviews, media analysis and critical theories, this paper explores how digital activism by youth-led movements transforms urban youth identities and enables intergenerational alliances to reshape the socio-political landscapes in Ghana within broader African and global contexts. This contributes to scholarly debates on social movements, digital culture and transformative urban praxis.