1 
 

Towards an African Indigenous Model of Communication for Software 

Development in Digital Humanities 

Akin-Otiko Akinmayowa 

Augustine Akintunde Farinola 

 

Abstract 

Drawing insight from Toyin Falola’s call for African scholars to Africanize knowledge, 

this paper argues for a review of the digital technological tools being used for research in 

African studies in order to adequately capture and properly process and present African 

data. To achieve this, the inadequacies of Digital Humanities for specific areas of African 

Studies will be highlighted, especially in the deployment of digital humanities tools. The 

major challenge being the distortion and constraint experienced in processing and 

presenting research through the use of Digital Humanities ‘tools of translation and 

communication. The paper argues that such technological limitation has its root in the 

incompatibility of the epistemological frameworks within which those digital tools were 

developed.  The paper discusses 'Ojú lòrówà' – a theory of communication in an African 

society as a model to highlight the importance of African context to African scholars in 

their exploration into African history, technology, culture, philosophy and tradition. 

Indigenous theory is an appropriate model for developing digital as well as virtual 

software for African scholars in human communication. The paper concludes by 

enjoining scholars in African Studies to ensure that the digital tools employed in African 

studies are not only able to collect data, but also able to process and present data 

adequately without losing the original meaning or sense. 

Keywords: African Studies, data-presentation, data-processing, 'Ojú lòrówà', software 

development, digital humanities. 

 

 

 



2 
 

Introduction 

In our increasingly digital world, it is expected that scholars in the humanities will 

embrace computer software and programs designed as tool for research. Meanwhile, 

experience has shown that scholars in African Studies have encountered difficulties in 

using those tools to capture a true representation of African heritage in the light of 

Africa’s indigenous concepts, phenomena, beliefs and worldviews. Instead of 

discouraging the use of these digital tools, we are developing a conceptual and 

epistemological framework for developers, as well as identifying the appropriate tools for 

research in Africa. 

To achieve this objective, we shall embark on a brief conceptual analysis and discussion 

on the humanities, digital technologies in the humanities, the idea of communication and 

digital communication, and technological tools used in research in the humanities. Then, 

we shall examine the inadequacies of some digital humanities tools for researchers in 

African Studies and argue that they were built on a theory of communication within the 

framework of Western and Oriental knowledge and belief system. This would necessitate 

the explication of the idea of Ojú lòrówà’ as a theory of communication to address this 

epistemic imposition on the technologies of the digital humanities. We will then deploy 

this theory to address the identified limitations of digital technological tools developed to 

be used by scholars in humanities. 

 

The Humanities: Definition, Disciplines, Goal, and Peculiarities  

The term ‘humanities’ comes from the Latin word ‘humanus’, meaning ‘human’ (Vito R. 

Giustiniani,1985). So, the idea of the humanities is considered as a loosely defined group 

of academic subjects united by a commitment to studying aspects of the human condition. 

These subjects produce reflections and thoughts on human experiences and practices. The 

disciplines of humanities include history, anthropology, literature, art, philosophy, and 

law, political and cultural studies. The study of the humanities helps to understand human 

values and how these values translate to knowledge, attitudes, policies and inventions for 

the advancement of commodious living and common good. (Godwin Sogolo, 1981) 

 

 

 



3 
 

Digital Humanities and Its Technological Tools  

The Digital Humanities (DH) currently incorporates both digitized and born-digital 

materials and combines the methodologies from traditional humanities disciplines (such 

as history, philosophy, linguistics, literature, art, archaeology, music, and cultural 

studies). It provides computing tools (like data visualization, information retrieval, data 

mining, statistics, text mining) and digital publishing tools (Arjun Sabharwal, 2015). 

Today, scholars in the humanities are using chat rooms, bulletin boards, and social 

networking websites for academic interactions. These digital technologies help in making 

digital information to travels over thousands of miles, thereby making research findings 

shareable within a global academic community. To be a member of these cyber 

communities, one simply needs a networked computer, or a computer that is connected to 

a larger system of other computers (Albert Borgmann, 1999). Furthermore, it is 

becoming easier than ever for scholars, through the use of technology, to validate, track, 

and cross-check information (Anne Burdick et al., 2012). The most interesting aspect is 

the easy access to primary source materials, understanding texts written in different 

languages, and in preserving digital resources for the future. Digital humanities 

technologies have enhanced perception, automated analysis, modelling and simulation, 

easy search for books, interactive music scores, dynamically generated maps, and other 

multimedia and digital resources or repositories. 

Most scholars in the humanities currently make effort to digitalize their works. The first 

process in doing this is the digitalization of texts, images, and other data (e.g., survey 

data, videos, etc.), then the delivery of that data via the web (Ibid.). The digitalization of 

text has helped scholarship as many more people could access those virtual libraries, 

museums, and archives across the world (Ian Foster, 2011). This has enabled historians, 

folklorists, digital humanists, ethnologists, anthropologists, and archivists in the process 

of collecting, preserving, and understanding, interpreting, and retelling stories of 

humanity (Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson, 2014). 

It does not require advanced computing or programming skills to benefit from the 

opportunities offered by digital humanities tools. Media outlets such as YouTube or 

SoundCloud offer near instant and free distribution of audio and video oral histories, 

while digital repository and content management systems like CONTENTdm, Omeka, or 



4 
 

even Drupal or Wordpress, provide powerful infrastructure for housing oral histories in a 

digital archive or library.  

Systems such as OHMS (ORAL History Metadata Synchronizer) now provide free 

opportunities to enhance access to oral histories online, connecting a textual search of a 

transcript or an index to the correlating moment in the online audio or video interview. 

Mobile applications like Curatescape offer enormous opportunities for collecting, curtain, 

and disseminating interviews and projects (Ibid). It must however be stated that as they 

offer benefits, these tools also posed potential threats such as increased vulnerability of 

narrators, infrastructure obsolescence, and hosts of other ethical issues (Ibid). Most of 

these technologies are built on the mandate that we have to be online and be connected to 

a source of power. This imperative creates a sense of significance dependence by that 

fact. For instance, with the advent of Apple iCloud, Amazon, Microsoft and other online 

storage systems, one no longer need the memory of one’s computer because everything 

one writes, photographs and records will be saved in the ‘cloud’ or on a server 

somewhere which one can access anywhere in the world. In other words, cloud storage 

allows scholars to manage their data in an infinitely more convenient way so that they are 

synchronized across our growing collections of information appliances (Domenico 

Fiormonte et al., 2015). 

 

Communication and Research In Humanities 

Research is a process by which human beings investigate and obtain an understanding of 

the world. Today, the way in which research is carried out is changing either for better or 

for worse. We use our brain along with technological aids so as to enhance the limited 

biological capabilities (Ian Foster, 2011). In our present-day society, electronic 

communication plays a vital role within the academic community such that anyone 

ignorant of the use of digital tools would become near invisible in the global academy. 

This is not a surprise since the seeds of modern digital technologies were planted many 

centuries ago and develop with the research of renowned scholars in the humanities 

(Albert Borgmann, 1999). 

Researchers in the humanities currently use tools such as such as telephones, cell phones, 

e-mail, and so on (Ananda Mitra, 2010)  for interpersonal communication; while 

electronic bulletin boards, chat rooms, digital conferencing, and small private digital 



5 
 

networks tools are used for group communication (Albert Borgmann, 1999). These tools 

have enabled author(s) or researcher(s), editor(s), technician(s), publisher(s), librarian(s), 

reader(s) and audience(s) to interact without even meeting physically. But there have also 

been some observation as the limitations that researchers are facing in their engagement. 

Daniel O'Donnell's review of global participation of researchers in digital humanities 

suggests that digital activity may be correlated with the economic situation of a country, 

such that countries with high income, will most likely witness a high participation in 

digital activities while countries with average or low income [here Africa studies fit] have 

partial or low participation (O'Donnell, 2012). 

Beyond the link the Digital Humanities has with economics, there is also the necessary 

link it has with culture and context, such that Digital humanities finds it easier to express 

data within the worldview of the coder and developer than the worldview of the user and 

learner where many African scholar belong. 

 

Inadequacies of Tools in Digital Humanities 

As scholarship moves from the libraries and the lecture halls to the digital 

communication networks, in order to deploy Digital Humanities, which is “an 

interdisciplinary academic field that is focussed on the development and use of applications that 

improve the quality of research and teaching in the humanities” (Babalola, 2014). Researchers 

are faced with new challenges, such as, collaborative authoring, multiple versioning, 

flexible attitudes toward intellectual property, peer contributions, access to multiple and 

multiplying communities, and overall pattern of distributed knowledge production, 

review, and use (Ibid.). Some of the real problems which the use of digital tools have 

engendered include: immersion in the virtual communities rather than the human 

communities, deception, misinformation or vulnerability of information, phishing, sudden 

loss of data, spamming and unwanted digital communication (Ibid.), open-source 

knowledge, lack of bridge between the academic and social life. 

Digital humanities scholars like Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd 

Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, and others have expressed their fear that “as humans and data 

machines become equal partners in cultural practice, social experience, and humanistic 

research, the humanities may no longer look like ‘The Humanities’ (Anne Burdick et al., 

2012). They pointed out the negative contributions tools of digital humanities have had 



6 
 

on the tension between those in the humanities who now solely embrace quantitative 

methods and those who insists on qualitative analysis. This is a tension that has integrated 

the quantitative wing into the social sciences, while the other wing fights to defend its 

autonomy and critical stance (Ibid.). Thus, the digital humanities scholars enjoined us, as 

the next generation of digital experimenters, to contribute to humanities theory by forging 

digital tools that quite literally embody humanities-centered views regarding the world. 

It is not helpful to classify Digital Humanities as unhelpful or dangerous to African 

Studies, researches show that technology is positively impacting on researchers and 

students, Babalola (2014) noted that in 2008, Lawal conducted a survey on the level of 

computer literacy and the use of the internet for research among the students and staff of 

computer science and engineering faculties in a Nigerian state university. The result 

revealed that ninety-four percent of the respondents are computer literate (Lawal et al. 

2008). 

 

Beyond the positive side is the limitation of Digital humanities to researchers in African 

Studies, because Digital Humanities does not fully represent the context and meanings 

that African ideas and worldviews carry when it tries to process and present data. It is the 

lack of adequacy in DH that this paper points out and attempts to engage. “The most 

cutting criticisms of digital humanities: that it constitutes a naively positivist refuge from 

cultural studies, critical race theory, postcolonial theory,  and  other  scholarly  methods 

designed  to  surface  the  concerns  of marginalized  communities” (Brier,  2012:390) 

Researches have shown that Digital Humanities lack ‘for now’ the ‘know how’ of 

detailed data processing and presentation of data from African studies, “African writers 

are at times forced to relate their worldviews in Western colonial languages which do not 

often lend themselves easily to expressing African sociocultural reality” (Bandia, 

1996:139). There are African ideas that cannot so far be completely and properly 

captured when translated or interpreted data into the language or programmes that the 

current Digital Humanities developer have and know. Global language and 

representatives many times shut out African context and particular views and ideas get 

missing (give examples) 

For many Africans, words [signs representations] are never adequate to fully express 

salient ideas, and there are issues and ideas that are commonly hidden in words and signs 



7 
 

such that, only trained person can understand the hidden ideas. This epistemic framework 

is contained in sayings such as àbò òrò làá so f’ómolúàbí tí ó bá dénú rè á di odindin 

(half a word is spoken to the wise, once heard, it becomes complete). This sets the 

background for the Epistemological frameworks of 'Ojú lòrówà'. There is so much that is 

said when eyes meet in communication, that which is not said can also be understood, 

these unspoken and unpresented ideas represent a percentage of data that so far do not 

have representations or equivalents in the Digital space; this makes it important to 

develop Digital Humanities in the context of Africans. The existing Digital tool cannot 

adequately process or present African ideas and now is the best time to begin to make 

changes since Digital Humanities, is still “a relative newcomer to the media scholar’s 

toolkit, is notoriously difficult  to  define” (Posner, 2018) and so gives room for the 

required addition and adjustments for a clearer processing and presentation of data in 

African Studies.   

If “Most digital humanities practitioners would agree that the digital humanist works at 

the intersection of technology and the humanities (which is to say, the loose collection of 

disciplines  comprising  literature,  art  history,  the  study  of  music,  media  studies, 

languages,  and  philosophy)” (Posner, 2018) there will be the required effort to develop 

tools that can adequately and correctly process and present African ideas with correct 

interpretation. Raising the issue is not enough, it is important to engage the issue because 

of the fact that “digital humanities has very real problems with racial diversity and gender 

representation in its scholarly community” (Posner, 2018).  

The concern of this paper is to engage the second and the third layers of GH engagements 

with particular reference to African studies, there seems to be little concern with 

‘sourcing’ idea since this happens at all levels of research, from the fieldwork to 

uploading ideas into machines. It is important to engage these issues as Digital 

humanities does not constitute a new discipline in itself, but rather a new approach to 

humanities research that cuts across different existing humanities disciplines, but the 

effect is not yet adequate in African Studies because “Although many Nigerians have 

acquired skills that are useful in digital humanities, and though the internet and computers are 

widely used for research purposes across the country, the integration of digital tools into the 

educational system is very low” (Babalola, 2014). 

 



8 
 

Importation and Use of Computer and Digital Technologies in Africa 

The use of Computer and Digital Technologies in Africa has led to what can be called 

‘technological dependence’ – a situation in which almost all the technologies that we 

boast of in Africa has their root in America and Europe, and indications that we have no 

total control. This poses a huge difficulty in the presentation and processing of ideas 

especially where the context influences the meaning and representation of ideas. The 

technological globalization agenda has not achieved the desired result of global 

representation of ideas and views. There is a sort of theoretical framework which enables 

what most scholars would call ‘the politics of technology’, this basically reflects the 

knowledge interest of the major game players, the major scholars in the DH. 

 

Attempts to Close the Gap 

There are no doubts that “Technology has certainly made leaps and bounds over the past 

fifty years, yet it is evident that many conversations about Africa from external 

perspectives have remained somewhat stunted” (Falola and Sanchez 2016:2). The 

shortfall in Digital Humanities’ politics of ideas has raised notable African linguists and 

technologists who now have recognized the need to develop digital humanities 

technologies that are built on African indigenous knowledge system and ontology. Such 

individuals include Tunde Adegbola, Tunde Opeibi, Victor Odumuyiwa, Frank Ugiomo, 

and many others. 

This shift is not limited to Africa as Microsoft and Google have been working to 

incorporate indigenous African languages into their software which are used by million 

of Scholars and Researchers in Africa. This quest leads to emergence of African linguists 

and information technology experts on the scene of localization of computer technology 

and the Africanization of the cyberspace.   

While digital humanities extend well beyond language-based research, textual resources 

and spoken language materials play a central role in most humanities disciplines. In the 

digital humanities, scholars have begun to see an increase emphasis on anthologies, 

especially for the purposes of annotation and data integration. Adegbola's approach to 

Computer and Digital Technology satisfy to a great extent the requirement for ordering 

technology for the good of a society. First, he mastered the principle of technology and 

gained expertise in programming languages.  He then contributed immensely to the 



9 
 

development of Human Language Technology (HLT) and this has lead to the localization 

of computer and digital technological tools in Africa. His investigation of African 

languages from acoustic, information theoretic and linguistic perspective led to the 

development of theories and frameworks for designers or developers of African based 

Human Language Technology (HLT).  

The concerns of these scholars raised the need to create technology within the ontology 

and epistemology of any indigenous society, and an avoidance of foreign ones that could 

destroy the local language and culture. This argument is built on the assumption that 

there is no account in history of people who became great after adopting the culture and 

language of other people. Such society won’t be able to connect their act and activities 

with their behaviour nor allow technology to respond their culture. For instance, when 

most African societies first came in contact with mobile phone, it was a communal 

device.  

It should be made clear that technology cannot consider the ontology of a society by 

itself; rather it is the designers that need to be motivated by question asked by the culture. 

It is in the course of technology transfer that one begins to ask which part of our culture it 

conforms into. This representation of the reality around us can be done either by creating 

analogy (between the known and the unknown) or digital (that in which values in the 

analogical sense is being represented by a number and compared with its equivalence in 

reality) 

 

BRIDGING THE GAP: OJÚ LÒRÓWÀ, A THEORY OF COMMUNICATION 

The contribution of Africans to Digital Humanities in order to process and present ideas 

in African Studies is an urgent task considering the low level of scientific and 

technological attitude within the continent. Writers have begun this attempt, through the 

use of “a characteristic feature of African creative writing [called] code-switching (CS) 

and code-mixing (CM) as a writing technique. CS and CM have a social, discursive and 

referential significance in a text” (Bandia, 1996:139). These reconstructed ideologies 

must then be incorporated into computer and digital technologies that characterize this 

milieu. This is in line with what an African Scholar Kofi Awoonor opines that science 

and technology must be grafted upon African social and cultural realities, without losing 

sight of the original humanistic impulse of their communal existence (Awoonor, 2006). 



10 
 

This is reflected in CS, “In code-switched discourse, the items in question form part of 

the same speech act. They are tied together prosodically as well as by semantic and 

syntactic relations equivalent to those that join passages in a single speech act” (Romaine 

1989:111). What then is the possibility for the localization of digital humanities 

technologies on African Studies for better processing and presentation. 

A typical African setup or research field has Folklores, proverbs and parables are 

folkmedia and means of information dissemination in Nigerian towns and villages 

(Nwuneli, 1983; Akpan, 1977; and Otasowie, 1981). Folkmedia are intangible artefact of 

a culture, made up of customs, traditions, stories, songs, religion, performance arts and 

superstition and these can pose difficulty to tools used in Digital Humanities.  

The concept of ‘Ojú lòrówà’, as a theory of communication, addresses some of the 

limitation in the existing Digital Humanities tools which serves as bedrock for the 

processing and presentation of research ideas in African Studies. ‘Ojú lòrówà’ is a 

Yoruba statement which could be literally translated as ‘discussion is in the eye’; that is, 

‘communication takes place when we see physically’. The eyes have always been a 

formidable means of initiating, sustaining and emphasizing details of conversation among 

the Africans and not just among the Yoruba. According to Nwuneli “In some cultures it is 

considered sincere and trustworthy when a person looks straight in the face or,...looks [at] 

you right in the eyes. In other cultures it is rude and impertinent to “catch somebody’s 

eye” during conversation. In some cultures, people express themselves non-verbally by 

the mimicry of the face” (1983:148). As a communication framework, ‘Ojú lòrówà’ has 

five major components:  

1. Coding: In this theory, like every communication, there has to be an operative 

coding system understood by the parties involved. Ojú lòrówà demands eye contact, 

or even contact through any of the other senses, for there to be communication using 

known and agreed on code. Holding one’s ear while talking with a child or another 

person, for the Yoruba, is a sign of warning. This may pass an entirely different 

communicative meaning in some other cultural contexts across the world.  

The reality of Digital Humanities can at best capture a sense of warning, but it will 

find it difficult to process how the holding of ears translates to warning. Beyond the 



11 
 

processing, the limitation of the existing tools become visible in its inability to 

communicate to the listener or reader why the warning is being issued. The general 

popular warning sign learnt by road users or public space users will not work here in 

the context of the African. The same sign can mean different things, the face (ojú) 

adds the context; if a mother holds her ears while looking at a child in a friend’s 

house, it simply will mean ‘I am warning you about what we had discussed earlier’, 

here the facial expression provides the context. But if the same mother does the same 

thing at home and the mood is happy, the facial express this time also provides the 

context, they mother may hold the ears and still be smiling,  the child understands 

that the context is milder and may not require to total halt in whatever is being done. 

There are not Digital Humanities tools that can fill this expression gap. The fixed 

tools and too mechanical for many African expressions.   

 

2. Privacy in communication: This theory ensures and protects privacy in 

communication on the ground that only the child or any other person in the know of 

the code can decipher what is being communicated. Persons outside the code will not 

understand the code. And this applies to codes that are specially developed by a 

group of people for particular communication either to exclude others from their 

communication for the sake of privacy or to password their communication. 

Developed codes serve as gate ways meanings and contents to be processed and 

presented, but these passwords and learnt and accessed by people who are trained 

across the globe, which is part of the aims of Digital Humanity, but Africa is replete 

with information that are coded and limited to specific groups and contexts. This are 

excluded from the tools of Digital Humanities either because the data is not made 

available because of the nature of Digital humanities or because the data is for coded 

group that do not find representation in the present sphere of Digital Humanities. A 

good example will the content of different cults in the African contexts. 

 

3. Participation: This theory ensures effective communication by ensuring that the 

subject and object of communication are totally immersed in the process through 

participation. For instance, the eye contact leaves out doubt as to whether the 

message was delivered or received. Communication is usually straight to the point; 



12 
 

message is usually clear, and brief. Every sign is done only when there is an 

eye/sound/touch contact between the parties engaged in the communication. 

Studies have shown that Africans are expressive, and messages are passed swiftly 

just as they can be changed using same code. This has no equivalent in Digital 

Humanities and codes are representative of particular messages. The swiftness and 

flexibility of messages requires participation. Communication is like a game where 

every player is expected to be focus for success and team play.  

 

4. Concentration: This theory sustains concentration by ensuring that messages are 

brief and straight to the point, for effective communication there is always the need 

to concentrate, that is why messages are given only when there is an eye contact, 

whenever there is no eye contact, a form of a sign (cough, taping of finger,  etc.) is 

given to draw the attention of the person to receive communication, and once 

attention is gained, attempt is made to sustain the concentration of the other party. 

Data in African Studies are continuous in their nature, it is not a once and for all 

encounter. When information is being passed, relationship is built as well. Persons 

involved in data sourcing are expected to maintain regular contact with the 

information for relevance. A password only makes information available, but the 

effectiveness of the information is achieved through proper use of context. For 

example, the tradition of greeting the king when one is passing by his palace will 

hold true, but there are certain times that the information will not be. 

5. Feedback: This theory ensures feedbacks – which are usually in the form of reaction 

to communication. What is communicated is either understood or not, once 

understood; a sign is given to indicate that communication had taken place. If code is 

not understood, a sign is given to indicate that message is not understood. It is never 

presumed; an affirmation or denial of message is always given. 

As the world becomes a global village, and “moves into this increasingly 

transnational and global age, it is more and more evident that homelands and 

identities are profound spaces for social, political, cultural, and academic 

engagement in Africa and beyond.” (Falola and Sanchez 2016:1). This creates the 

need for an effective theory of communication, that can source for data and beyond 

that adequately process and present data from African Studies. Lessons can be learnt 



13 
 

from writers such that “When African writers cannot adequately express African 

sociocultural reality in a European language, they resort to the use of indigenous 

words and expressions” (Bandia, 1996:141). Digital Humanities experts must also 

realize that there are ideas that cannot be captured unless the African context and 

tools are deployed to facilitate communication among functionaries in humanities. In 

the development of those tools (software), it would be necessary for the 

developers to put those five components into consideration in the course of their 

brainstorming.  

 

8.0 Conclusion 

Digital Humanities is still, but the reality of African Studies is beyond material 

representation, there is òrò which represents the material data that has been sourced but 

beyond the material data there is also, ojú which give the contest and more details to the 

material substance that has been gathered. This for now is beyond the developed 

programs and tools of Digital Humanities.  

In this article, we have been able to illustrate how digital technological tools can be 

Africanized using ‘Ojú lòrówà’ as an indigenous theory suitable for developing digital as 

well as virtual software for African scholars. We have addressed the cause of those 

challenges confronting scholars in African Studies in their deployment of digital 

humanities tools. We have also identified beneficial digital tool that could genuinely 

promote research in African Studies, as well as discourage the usage of digital 

technological tools such AntConc, Nvivo, E-translators, and likes, on the basis that they 

distort or imposes a certain framework on literatures in African history, techne, culture, 

philosophy and tradition. 



14 
 

Furthermore, we enjoin scholars in African Studies to provide contents and frameworks 

for appropriate digital technological tools for Research in Africa. Effort must be made to 

develop multimedia documentaries, archives of cultural movies, digital translators for 

African languages, virtual galleries that would display African sculptures, arts, artifacts 

and antiques. In this age of technology, there is need for scholars in African studies to 

extract, from our indigenous practices, theories and framework that would help software 

developers to create tools appropriate for our knowledge system. On a final note, we 

advocate for minimum digital literacy for African researchers and scholars in humanities.  

This will ensure the availability of their works online, through academic social media and 

community such as academia or research gate, thereby bringing the research efforts made 

in Africa available to the global academic community. “Digital Humanities work has 

been criticized as empiricist, secular, and reductive of the creativity of human expression 

to a mathematical elegance that perhaps no longer carries the evocative mysteries of the 

original object or experience of it” (Hall, 2017). If the existing Digital humanities tools 

are not improved upon, by including and using African contextual digital representations: 

Meanings will be lost, details will be sacrificed and fundamentally, ideas will be 

misrepresented. 

 

 

 

About the Authors 

Akinmayowa Akin-Otiko currently works at the Institute of African and Diaspora 

Studies, University of Lagos. Akinmayowa does research in African Traditional 

medicine, Religion and Culture. Their current project is on: i) the use of Traditional 

Medicine for primary health care; ii) Religion and Culture of the Yoruba in Nigeria. 

 

Augustine Farinola is currently a researcher at the Department of English Literature, 

University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His research focuses on post 

phenomenological analysis of Digital Humanities (DH) Technological tools used for 

Scholarly Communication and Linguistic Analysis. 

 

 

 

 



15 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES 

Babalola, T. L. (2014). The Digital Humanities and Digital Literacy: Understanding the 

Digital Culture in Nigeria. Digital Studies/le Champ Numérique, 5(1). 

Bartscherer, Thomas and Coover,  Roderick .(Ed.). (2011). Switching Codes: Thinking 

Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts. `University of Chicago 

Press. 

Borgmann, Albert (1999).  Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn 

of the Millelium. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Ltd. 

Borgmann, Albert. (2005). Technology. In Dreyfus and Wrathall (Ed.) A Companion to 

Heidegger (pp. 420 -432).Washington: Blackwell Publishing. 

Burdick, Anne. Schnapp, Jeffrey. Drucker, Johanna. And Lunenfeld, Peter. (2012). 

Digital Humanities. Cambridge MA, United States of America: MIT Press. 

C.N, Davidson (2012). Humanities 2.0: promise, perils, predictions. In M. K. Gold (Ed.) 

Debates in the digital humanities (pp. ). Minneapolis, MN :University of Minnesota 

Press. 

Das, Apurba. (2010) Digital Communication: Principles and System Modelling (India: 

Springer. 

Das, Apurba. (2010). Digital Communication: Principles and System Modelling. India: 

Springer. 

Davidson C.N. (2012). Humanities 2.0: promise, perils, predictions. In M. K. Gold (Ed.) 

Debates in the digital humanities Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 

Domenico Fiormonte et al. (2015). The Digital Humanist: A Critical Inquiry (Brooklyn, 

New York: Punctum Books. 

Douglas A. Boyd and Larson, Mary A. (2014) Oral History and Digital Humanities: 

Voice, Access and Engagement USA: Palgrave Macmillan. 



16 
 

Fiormonte, Domenico. (2015). The Digital Humanist: A Critical Inquiry. Brooklyn, New 

York: Punctum Books. 

Gill, Jim and Geoff, Vincent. (1981) Software Development Handbook Texas: Texas 

Instruments. 

Meinel, Christoph and Sack, Harald. (2014). Digital Communication: Communication, 

Multimedia, Security Berlin, Germany: Springer. 

Mitra,Ananda. (2010). Digital Communication: From Email to the Cyber Community. 

New York: Infobase Publishing. 

Rydberg-Cox, Jeffery A. (2006). Digital Libraries and the Challenges of Digital 

Humanities Oxford: Chandos Publishing Limited. 

Sabharwal, Arjun. (2015). Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities: Preserving and 

Promoting Archival and Special Collections. USA: Elsevier. 

Skolnikoff, B. Eugene. (1993) The Elusive Transformation: Science, Technology, and the 

Evolution of International Politics Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press.  

 

 

JOURNALS 

Borgmann, Albert. (2000). Semiartificial Intelligence. In Mark Wrathall & Jeff Malpas 

(Ed.) Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus 

Vol.2 (pp. 197 -206) Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press 

F. Reynolds, Dwight. (2016) ‘From Basmati Rice to the Bani Hilal: Digital Archives and 

Public Humanities’ in Elias Muhanna (Ed.), The Digital Humanities and Islamic & 

Middle East Studies Germany: De Gruyter. 

Sogolo, Godwin. (1981).  Literary Values and the Academic Mind: A Portrait of the 

Humanistic Studies. Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies, No. 2. 

The Journal of Epsilon Pi Tau, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 1978), pp. 46-51  

Weidong, Xia and Lee, Gwanhoo. (March 2010) “Toward Agile: An Integrated Analysis 

of Quantitative and Qualitative Field Data on Software Development Agility” in : MIS 

Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1 pp. 87-114 Published by: Management Information Systems 

Research Center, University of Minnesota.