Author Archive

Fikayo Akeredolu (University of Oxford)

Fikayo Akeredolu is a DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford and China - Africa Program Officer at the African Climate Foundation. Her doctoral research focuses on African agency and perception in the Sino-African political and economic relationship.

A Pew Research Centre survey showed that citizens of 19 advanced economies consider social media simultaneously constructive and destructive in political life. A majority of citizens believe that social media has had a positive impact on democracy. What about frontier economies? How has social media affected politics and political interaction in African countries with rapid population growth, increasing life expectancy, and widespread poverty? Consider Nigeria. In mid-2017, Nigeria was the most populous nation on the continent. By 2050, Nigeria will be the third most populous nation in the world. This large population has increasingly adopted social media. There were approximately 33 million users in 2022, up from 18 million in 2017. Young people aged 18 to 34 make up the …