Short Abstract

How is African orality transformed when stories, proverbs, performances and indigenous knowledge move between communities, archives, social media and AI? This panel examines digital orality, epistemic sovereignty, cultural ownership and the changing politics of African knowledge.

Long Abstract

African oral traditions have never been static. Stories, proverbs, songs, praise poetry, performances, and indigenous knowledge have historically travelled across generations, languages, communities, and media. Yet artificial intelligence, social media, digital archives, environmental disruption and global cultural industries are transforming not only how African folklore circulates, but also who records it, owns it, interprets it and speaks through it. Taking ECAS 2027's “African Prisms” as both metaphor and methodological challenge, this panel asks what happens when African orality is refracted through multiple contemporary prisms: community memory, performance, digital platforms, algorithms, archives, ecological change and global knowledge regimes.The panel moves beyond approaches that position oral tradition primarily as endangered heritage in need of preservation. Instead, it conceptualises orality as a living, adaptive and contested knowledge infrastructure through which communities negotiate identity, history, ecological knowledge, political critique and social futures. Contributions may examine digital storytelling, AI-generated or appropriated folklore, algorithmic circulation, indigenous intellectual property, oral archives, performance and embodiment, language loss and revitalisation, environmental knowledge, youth creativity, diaspora transmission, or the methodological challenges of researching technologically mediated orality. Central to the panel are questions of epistemic authority: Whose knowledge becomes data? Who has the right to digitise, translate, reinterpret or monetise oral heritage? What is lost, transformed or created when embodied performance becomes digital content? By bringing folklore studies into conversation with digital humanities, decolonial thought, AI ethics, environmental humanities and indigenous knowledge studies, the panel repositions African orality as a critical site for understanding Africa's changing knowledge futures.

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