Transnational hashtag protest movements and emancipatory politics in Africa: A three country study

Abstract

This study explores three of sub Saharan Africa’s hashtag movements: Zimbabwe’s #ZimbabweanLivesMatter, Es watini’s # Es watiniLivesMatter and Nigeria’s #EndS ARS hashtags. Theore tically, we rely on the transnational alternative digital public sphere and hashtag activism to understand how social media acted as a meeting place for mobilization and building cross bounda- ry pollination and unitary movements. This investigation relied o n a combination of virtual ethnog- raphy and purposive sampling as methodological approaches. Thematic analysis was the analytical tool employed with four themes informing this investigation: democratisation and human rights, transnational solidarity, states ’ response to hashtag movements and use of parody accounts as a counter hegemonic strategy. The study found that these hashtags and movements achieved a modi- cum of ‘success’ by forcing some of Africa’s enduring dictatorships to make piecemeal concessions o f varying degrees