No abstract

Communication is fundamentally a toolbox of symbols used to create meaning in society. Its existence is a necessity spawned by circumstantial and society's contingencies at every turn. It is the reason languages, cues, imageries, and symbols—the building blocks of communication—continue to evolve with the times. The ritual of this dynamism is precipitated by a number of factors like socio-cultural identity crisis, economic and political variables, etc. This transitional socialisation continues to surge in the digital space of multi-platforms and the internet. Thus, this chapter attempts to evaluate the tenders of communication in the digital space, its influence on cultural identity, and the place of Africa in the narrative. The study submits that although the global nature of communication is believed to have overbearing influence on the continent's outlook, Africa being a culturally strong entity can outsource to the rest of the world and into the digital space its numerous rich cues, symbols, and signs to give the cultural identifiers indelibility and relevance on the global map.

News, in the tradition of the West, is majorly individualized, leaning strongly towards personality responsibility cult. It stands aloof from the communalization that is the central ideology of African metaphysics. In other fields and spheres, Ubuntu has enjoyed a veiled renaissance as a pivotal theme of identity outlook that resonates with many traditions of reasoning in Africa. The media protocol in Africa has been outside that experimentation. The study is a philosophical interrogation of personality-celebrity-prominence as a news marker/source, foist on Africa in contradistinction to Africa's pristine worldview. As a concept paper, this research functionalizes the applicability of Ubuntu in news practice in Africa, suggesting that determinant and validity like prominence with Western predisposition and cognition should be seen beyond the prism of celebrities. It holds that prominence, as subject of news source, should be broadened within the context of community testament as validation of communal personality rather than individual persons.

A strong reason democracy continues to be favored in the 21st century is because it is presented as more fluid and amendable to political evolution in digitization. While digitization of governance is an advantage worth exploring, in Africa, Western democracy remains a challenge especially for young and experimental governments and particularly that the system lacks indigenous organism in origin. A fundamental thrust of this chapter therefore is to interrogate how nations of Africa are grappling with the many variables of democracy as a Sphinx, how good governance, postmodernist demands jump in the fray of theories and practices to shape the form of governance evolving in Africa. The chapter is a positional outlook on the development as they unfold. It suggests that though there is a speed deficit of Africa catching up with the hypothetical perfect Western system's demand, the dawn of e-governance in the continent should be uniquely organismic to sync with Africa's heterogeneous cultural diversity in order to achieve desired results of speed and all-around development.