Ujamaa discursivities in Ghanaian technopolitical activism: decolonizing critical discourse studies through African epistemologies

I situate this paper within ongoing calls to decolonize and reimagine critical discourse studies and rhetoric scholarship through African epistemological frameworks. Within these conversations, scholars have critiqued the universalist assumptions of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as well as the dominance of Western frameworks for theorizing social movements and political dissent. To theorize technopolitical dissent in Africa thus necessitates an African parlance that speaks to such indigeneities. I argue that conventional CDA, largely rooted in Eurocentric paradigms, risks overlooking Indigenous rhetorical traditions and epistemes that shape activist discourses within African contexts. To substantiate such claims, I examine the rhetorical agency of Ghanaian youth, particularly on how they utilize X as a discursive site to assert political agency in the context of the December 2024 general elections. I conceptualize their rhetorical agency as Ujamaa discursivity—a theoretical and methodological neologism that recenters African modes of expressing dissent, egalitarianism, democratization, and accountability. I argue that the tapestry of rhetorical practices through which Ghanaian youth articulate dissent necessitates an analytical aperture that merges CDA with African onto-epistemologies. Such a synergy captures the discursive ingenuities and political valences of youth digital culture toward systemic political change.