Digital colonialism risks overshadowing Burundi’s indigenous storytelling traditions via tech-driven spectacle
Original framing: “Reimagining African storytelling through video mapping in Burundi” — Africa News
Rural storytellers, griots, and elders—whose traditions are the foundation of Burundian culture—are conspicuously absent from the festival’s narrative, replaced by urban, tech-savvy artists. Women, who often hold key roles in oral storytelling traditions, are underrepresented in the event’s programming and leadership. The festival’s focus on Bujumbura’s elite spaces excludes the majority of Burundians who live in rural areas, where oral traditions remain vibrant but lack digital infrastructure.
The AFRICA ON MAPPING Festival exemplifies how digital art, when divorced from indigenous epistemologies, risks becoming a neocolonial tool that repackages African culture for global consumption while sidelining the very communities it claims to celebrate.
The event’s reliance on colonial-era buildings as ‘canvases’ and Western tech infrastructures mirrors historical patterns of cultural extraction, from the colonial suppression of oral traditions to the modern-day plunder of rare earth minerals for digital devices. Yet, the festival also presents an opportunity to invert this dynamic: by centering land sovereignty, co-design with marginalized voices, and decolonial education, it could model a future where technology amplifies—not erases—indigenous knowledge. The trickster’s lesson here is clear: innovation must be judged not by its spectacle, but by its reciprocity. Actors like the *Igishigishiri* poets of Burundi or the *Ishyaka* archivists of Rwanda show that digital tools can serve preservation when controlled by those whose stories they carry. The path forward requires dismantling the extractive logics of the ‘creative economy’ and replacing them with a model rooted in communal memory, land, and mutual accountability—a true reimagining of African storytelling.