African Youth’s Visioning for Re-inventing Democracy in the Digital Era: A Case of Use of Structured Dialogical Design

Abstract

This article discusses the African cohort’s contribution to the “re-inventing democracy in the digital era” project, funded by a UN Democracy Fund. The project involved almost 100 youth from five regions of the globe in deliberating upon the future of democracy, using a methodology called structured dialogical design. We explain the utility of this methodology for aiding processes of deliberative democracy. We focus on the Africa cohort’s (collective) identification of current challenges and envisioning of corrective actions for democracy in the digital age; we justify our choice and point out that many of their suggestions apply to other regions too.