How is digital technology changing the lives of urban dwellers in Africa ‘from below’?

Digital sociology advocates for attempting to understand societal dynamics, particularly in the context of African cities, by examining the contribution made by digital technologies to the construction and maintenance of human relations and social institutions. The present contribution adopts this perspective, ‘from below’, on the social uses of the digital and of social networks. It approaches the city through the way in which those who live in it continue to appropriate it, invent it, and reinvent themselves, and thereby ‘create urban society’ by means of digital technology. This study presents a diverse array of cultural and contextualised uses of the digital, while also taking into account particular dynamics of the co-construction of urban modernity.