In Kano, northern Nigeria, women who do not use smartphones or social media are being trained to call radio stations and challenge hate speech on air. In western Kenya, university students are using memes, Instagram stories, and football tournaments to reduce political and ethnic tensions. At first glance, these efforts may not fit the familiar image of “digital peacebuilding.” But that is exactly why they matter.
Too often, conversations about technology and peacebuilding treat digital tools as symbols of progress, suggesting that the more advanced the technology, the better the peace work. That way of thinking suggests there is a single model of progress, with ideas flowing from global experts down to local communities.
But my research on initiatives operating at the intersection of the local and the digital in African peacebuilding suggests something different. In practice, digital peacebuilding is not mainly about sophisticated tools. It is about how people adapt technology to the realities of their own communities.
A Local Response in Kano
One example comes from the Women and Youths for Justice and Peace Initiative (WAYJPI), a grassroots organization based in Kano State, Nigeria. Kano is a predominantly Hausa-speaking, Muslim-majority city with a long and complex history of political, ethnic, and religious tension. During election periods, those tensions can be inflamed quickly through radio broadcasts, social media posts and other forms of public messaging.
WAYJPI’s response is rooted in local knowledge. Volunteers verify misleading images and videos, flag harmful content, and engage directly with people spreading it. The organization also recognizes the importance of local media and local political culture. For example, WAYJPI recognized a political phenomenon unique to Kano, known as Sojojin Baka, or “political gladiators.” They include articulate, charismatic figures hired by politicians to dominate local media and shape public opinion, often through divisive and inflammatory language. The organization connected to some of these individuals and trained them to repurpose their skills and platforms for peace. People who once amplified hate now promote dialogue.
WAYJPI also works with living and evolving lexicons of hate speech terms and phrases in Hausa, Nigerian Pidgin, and local slangs, updating them with input from the communities where it works. This matters because hate speech is highly contextual. Words that seem harmless to outsiders can carry a very different meaning locally. In other words, effective digital peacebuilding in such situations depends on understanding how people speak, listen, and interpret messages in a specific context.
Maskani Commons in Western Kenya
A second example comes from Maskani Commons in western Kenya. The project emerged in 2020 through a partnership between Rongo University’s Center for Media, Democracy, Peace and Security and Build Up. It brought together students from several public universities to address online and offline polarisation in a country still shaped by memories of the 2007 post-election violence.
The students were trained in storytelling, depolarisation, and platform-specific communication. They learned how different tools could serve different purposes, such as using X for real-time dialogue, Instagram for Visual storytelling, and WhatsApp for community conversations. But as they practiced, it became clear that some of the most important peacebuilding opportunities were away from screens.
When students returned home during school holidays, many found that several community members rarely used social media. So, they met people where they were: at family gatherings, religious events, cultural festivals, and football matches. These offline conversations were not separate from their digital work. They brought these conversations back to online platforms, creating a constant exchange between physical and digital spaces.
In this kind of work, online and offline peacebuilding are not opposites, compromises or workarounds. They are intertwined.
The Digital Is Always Local
What stands out in both Nigeria and Kenya is that these peacebuilders themselves do not draw a hard line between “digital” and “local” work. For them, the same tensions, rumours and political divisions move across radio, WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, religious gatherings and street conversations. The platform may change, but the social reality behind it remains the same.
This has major implications for how peacebuilding programmes are designed, funded, and evaluated. When a student identifies as a digital peacebuilder during a peace conversation at a football match, she is not straying from digital work. She is doing the real work. When volunteers sit with local residents to identify new coded phrases being used as hate speech, they are not supplementing their digital monitoring, they are conducting it.
Seen this way, digital peacebuilding does not float above everyday life. It grows out of language, trust, memory, identity, and local relationships. A Facebook group in Kano is not the same as a Facebook group in Nairobi or New York, even if the technology is identical. What matters is who is speaking, who is listening, what the words mean in that context, who is affected by the words, and who has the credibility to respond.
Tools can be shared across borders, but peacebuilding strategies cannot simply be copied and pasted, even when they use shared tools. They have to be translated into local realities.
A Lesson for Peacebuilding
As artificial intelligence, algorithmic recommendation systems, and encrypted messaging make harmful content spread faster and further, there is understandable pressure to find scalable technological fixes. But the experiences of groups like WAYJPI and Maskani Commons suggest that the most effective responses will not come from technology alone, no matter how advanced. They will come from people who understand their communities well enough to adapt tools to local needs.
Across Africa, digital peacebuilders are already doing this. They are working in local languages, using trusted networks, and adjusting their methods as conflict dynamics evolve. Their work is a reminder that peace is not built by platforms. It is built by people.
Dr. Sokfa John is a scholar and practitioner in mediation, conflict transformation, and digital peacebuilding. He currently serves as Acting Director of the Centre for Mediation in Africa (CMA) at the University of Pretoria. He is also Global Engagement Lead & Peace and Security Strategist for the Southern Africa Centre for Mediation & Violent Extremism Prevention. Sokfa's research on the intersection of localization and digitalization in African peacebuilding has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) through the African Peacebuilding and Development Dynamics (APDD) program. As a National Geographic Explorer, Sokfa also works on the Cultural Technologies of Peacemaking.
