Increasing global economic inequality, conflicts, and climate change have accelerated population migration, often resulting in the disruption of traditional family configurations. However, the proliferation of digital communication platforms has helped foster a sense of family by creating more communication opportunities for geographically dispersed families. Because of their extensive reliance on digital communication, they have come to be known as 'digital families'. Deploying the concepts of digital family, family language policy, and the notion of affordances, this study examines the perspectives of purposively selected South African-based parents of children living in Zimbabwe on how they leverage the digital affordances of WhatsApp to participate in their children's language socialisation. Data are drawn from qualitative semi-structured interviews with 10 parents in digital families. Findings reveal that parents' language ideologies shape their language practices in parent-child online interactions. While parents find the affordances of WhatsApp calling useful for fostering a sense of presence and explicit language correction, children's non-conformity with parents' home language-centred practices casts WhatsApp as a site of family language policy contestation and negotiation. This study contributes to literature on family language policy within a Global South context.
The article discusses the impact of various colonial regimes on the failure of public oversight systems for digital surveillance in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The article responds to the question: How have colonial legacies in different southern African countries shaped their experiences and practices of public surveillance oversight? Drawing on in-depth interviews and textual analysis of historical documents, credible news reports, and policy documents, and utilising Anthony Giddens' structuration theory, the article's central argument is that the authoritarianism and politicisation of contemporary intelligence surveillance mechanisms have their genesis in Africa's colonial legacy. This means that the colonial legacy of surveillance intelligence and post-colonial practices are two sides of the same coin. Both colonial and post-colonial architectures are characterised by politicisation and an increasingly hardened authoritarian practice, resulting in the effective attenuation of public oversight of digital surveillance.
The informal economy in Kenya is a significant source of livelihood, particularly for women. However, analysis of the women entrepreneurs in the informal economy reveals heightened vulnerabilities due to structural inequalities and gender dynamics. Since September 2022, Kenya has experienced a policy shift towards a new wave of neoliberal policies. This shift has been characterised by fiscal austerity, which has led to the removal of fuel subsidy, reduction of budgetary allocation to Fuel Stabilization Fund, increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) on fuel, and tightening of monetary policies. This article explored the financial and social reproduction vulnerabilities that informal women entrepreneurs face under this new policy environment. Evidence was drawn from qualitative analysis of a key informant interview and 20 in-depth interviews with informal women entrepreneurs in Nasha market, Nakuru City. This study reveals how these women grapple daily with shrinking incomes, limited access to affordable credit, and increasing debt burden. At household level, these women deal with reduced capacity for the provision of household needs and increased burden of unpaid care work. Despite these obstacles, they actively draw on their social ties and build financial resilience through participation in chamas, and rely on their social networks for childcare support.
This article examines why public oversight of intelligence-driven digital surveillance produced divergent outcomes in Botswana and Mauritius - two African democracies with comparable political and socio-economic contexts. Using Resource Mobilisation Theory and Political Process Theory within a Most Similar Systems Design framework, the article compares mobilisation strategies against the 2013 biometric Smart ID system in Mauritius and the 2022 Criminal Procedure and Evidence Bill in Botswana. Although the cases involve different policy instruments, both constitute forms of state-led expansion of surveillance authority, thereby providing equivalent sites for analysing public oversight responses. Mauritius saw broad-based mobilisation - including grassroots actors, legal experts and media - which led to successful policy and legal reforms and the dismantling of a central biometric database. In contrast, Botswana's mobilisation was elite-driven and achieved only limited amendments, constrained by weak civil society, limited public engagement and executive dominance. This article demonstrates that the success of public oversight in confronting surveillance abuses depends on the degree of grassroots participation, the ability to form coalitions with diverse actors, and the structural and cultural contexts that enable or hinder mobilisation. It highlights the necessity of inclusive, broad-based public engagement for achieving meaningful reforms in state surveillance practices.
Botswana has embraced digital learning in the country's quest to transition from a natural resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one. This research argues that although digital learning in Botswana can support environmental sustainability, its implementation was rushed and it poses environmental challenges. The research contends that while political rhetoric emphasised digital learning, there was lack of legal and institutional frameworks to support sustainable implementation. Limited digital skills development, weak e-waste management strategies and digital infrastructure expansion raise environmental concerns. The study adopted a qualitative documentary case study design and employed thematic analysis of government policies, reports, and scholarly literature. The findings demonstrated political roll-out of e-learning without sufficient legal-institutional frameworks to support it, inadequate digital skills and equipment, lack of e-waste management regulations, and ecological risks associated with increased use of coal-generated electricity. The study recommends strengthening digital skills, legal and institutional frameworks to promote sustainable digital transformation in Botswana.
Through an examination of digital surveillance controversies in South Africa, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this article explores the factors explaining differences in the settlement of conflicts over digital surveillance overreach and the sustainability of public oversight practices across three countries with similar authoritarian histories. In South Africa, activism around surveillance overreach peaked and then declined during Jacob Zuma's presidency, to be replaced by strategic litigation around digital surveillance in the absence of a mobilisation strategy. In Angola, a group of young activists was arrested and charged with incitement to rebellion and attempted assassination of the then-president after the state placed them under surveillance for organising a reading group. A public backlash against the DRC government's introduction of the Registry of Mobile Devices (RAM), as well as the conviction of journalist Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala after becoming a surveillance victim by the state, demonstrates growing capacity for public oversight in that country. Using a critical approach and a comparative case study methodology supplemented by political process and agency theories, this article examines these conflict scenarios and what they tell us about capacities to sustain public oversight of digital surveillance. Public oversight has been less sustainable in Angola than South Africa or the DRC. The key factor in its sustainability is explained by the agency theory of affected interests, in which a political community is more likely to take action when common interests are affected by a national decision.
