Towards an African Indigenous Model of Communication for Software Development in Digital Humanities

Drawing insight from Toyin Falola's call for African scholars to Africanize knowledge, this paper is an attempt to Africanize digital technological tools being used for research in African studies. Our aim is to address the challenges confronting scholars in African Studies, especially across the disciplines in the Arts and Humanities, in their deployment of digital humanities tools. The major challenge being the distortion and constraint experienced in research through the use of tools such as AntConc, Nvivo, E-translators, etc. The paper argues that such technological limitation has its root in the incompatibility of the epistemological frameworks within which those digital tools were developed. So, it proposes a framework that would help African scholars to extrapolate meaning, values, and rationality in their exploration into African history, techne, culture, philosophy and tradition. The paper introduces a new framework using 'Ojú lòrówà' – a theory of communication in an African society. It demonstrates that this indigenous theory is an appropriate model for developing digital as well as virtual software for African scholars with a focus on cognitive process in human communication. The paper concludes by enjoining scholars in African Studies to be selective in the use of digital tools, and to develop frameworks that would help software developers to create tools appropriate for our knowledge system.