In Kenya’s Gen Z protests in 2024, TikTok was a key element in mobilizing the youth. NAI researcher Martins Kwazema is working with a project that analyses how the mobile app increasingly has become a political tool for young political activists in Africa.

Kwazema wants to understand how social media can enable young people to get involved in societal change. Obviously, there are several platforms — not least WhatsApp, which is the most-used app on the African continent. However, TikTok is especially big among teenagers, Kwazema notes, and therefore a space that allows for the birth of a youth movement.

“TikTok’s strength is that it allows the youth to play and have fun while engaged in political struggle. In many cases, people pick up critics of the government on X, bring it to TikTok and turn it into parody and satire. This is what differs this ‘serious TikTok’ from the normal visual TikTok — there is a strong political message”, Kwazema says.

The youth protest movement grew quickly in Kenya. To counter it, the president felt obliged to hire his own social media experts to run the thread #RutoDelivers. Most other responses from the Kenyan authorities were violent. However, the police and security forces had difficulty finding who was organising the movement. They identified a few figureheads, but no concrete leaders could be found.

“This is a common feature in most youth movements and protests on the African continent since the Covid-19 pandemic — they are leaderless. Young people organically meet on online platforms and take to the street without forming committees. And, in particular, TikTok has its own mechanisms that feeds into this leaderlessness”, Kwazema remarks. He adds: “tools such as duet, POV [point of view] and lip-sync challenges create spaces where specific issues are discussed on an ad hoc basis before moving to the next. As these movements develop with velocity it becomes challenging to identify leadership”.

According to Kwazema, TikTok could play an important role for democracy in Africa as it produces new political identities. “For instance, #Fearless and #Tribeless were two such identities that Gen Z pushed in videos on TikTok. Previously, political identities were often based on liberation struggles and ethnicity. Gen Z has found out how to create new ones that challenge the old identities”.

Interestingly, he points out, while TikTok is used as a political weapon for increased democracy in African countries, and countering emerging authoritarianism, in Europe and the US it is regarded with scepticism because of its Chinese origins. “The West fears that the gathered information on the platform, in Chinese hands, can be used against their democracy. In Africa, however, TikTok is seen as a way to fight corruption and autocracy — which is important now when democracy and democratic competence is somewhat ‘struggling’ and unpredictable in many African countries”.

That is why we need to understand TikTok better and take it into social science research, Kwazema argues. Even though TikTok played a big role in recent protests in both Kenya and Nigeria, research on it from an African perspective is still lacking.

Kwazema gathers data through ethical scraping and screengrabs, and by following hashtags. He is currently analysing the content of 2,500 TikTok videos from Kenya, and trying to identify how TikTok and its socio-technological tools contribute to creating new political identities.

“The theoretical frameworks l use in my research are visual sociology External link. and mediatisation External link., which l hope will help me in starting a bigger conversation about it. Basically, I am studying how empirical research on TikTok in Africa can be carried out”, Kwazema concludes.

TEXT: Johan Sävström