Digital Kinship

Digital Kinship was a nine-part live inquiry convening leading thinkers of African descent to interrogate one of the defining questions of our time:

What does kinship mean in an era shaped by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and platform power?

This series explored how digital infrastructures are reshaping identity, belonging, governance, power, and our relationship to the more-than-human world. Rooted in Afro-diasporic and Global South perspectives, the conversations challenged Western-dominated narratives about technology and centred alternative epistemologies, ethics, and futures.

Across three thematic arcs — power, justice, and life-affirming design — contributors examined:

• The historical and contemporary power paradigms embedded in digital systems
• Digital rights, social movements, and platform governance
• Designing technology for belonging rather than extraction
• Reimagining relationality beyond the human-centric frame

Contributors included: Dr. Ezekiel Dixon-Román; Dr. Wunpini Fatimata Mohamed; Christina Harrington; Berhan Taye; Chenai Chair; and others shaping digital ethics, justice, and design globally.

Digital Kinship is part of Ijeruka’s Field Notes archive — our horizon-scanning and futures sense-making practice. It reflects the calibre of interdisciplinary inquiry that shapes the intellectual backbone of our village.

Originally convened live in 2023, the full recordings are now exclusively available to Ijeruka Village members inside our digital campus.