DIGITAL HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP IN AFRICA:  Prospects and Challenges

1. Abstract

This research addresses the issues surrounding the low level of Digital Humanities (DH) technological consciousness among students and academics in the humanities discipline in Africa (Nigeria). The study, using online questionnaires, shows that despite the wide acceptance of DH Technological tools among some African scholars in the humanities, there are still challenges experienced by these Scholars in the course of using some of these DH tools to capture African realities. These difficulties include low level of training for users of DH technologies in Africa, as well as the designers' failure to optimize those tools for use in the analysis of data, texts, and images extracted in Africa. To address these constraints, this research enjoins African scholars to come up with epistemological and ontological frameworks that would aid software developers in creating tools which capture the unique aspects of African history, techne, culture, philosophy and tradition.