For this A Long Talk, Ukamaka Olisakwe and Ololade Faniyi talk about reimagining African feminist thought in the digital age.

Yvonne: Hello, Ukamaka and Ololade! It’s great to have you both here, and thank you for agreeing to this long talk.

Ololade: Hello, Yvonne and Ukamaka! I’m excited to start and hope you’re both doing well.

Ukamaka: It’s so nice to meet you, Ololade! Thank you for setting up this medium, Yvonne! I look forward to the conversation.

Yvonne: I’m so thrilled that you both agreed to this. I’d like to go a bit into why this pairing made sense to me. Ukamaka, your work centres on feminist storytelling and radically reclaims African traditions, both in your fiction and through Isele Magazine. Ololade, your research, writing, and work with The Republic are at the forefront of digital African feminisms: you examine how power, surveillance, and technology intersect with feminist resistance and thought. Together, you bridge two powerful realms: narrative and theory, the archive and the digital, lived experience, and structural critique. “Reimagining African Feminist Thought in the Digital Age” directly intersects with the core of both your work, allowing you to explore your shared commitments to African feminism and decolonial thought through your distinct lenses. I am especially intrigued by both your explorations of motherhood, reproductive control/oppression, and women’s invisible labour. And as part of this conversation, I’d love for you to also reflect on motherhood—how it’s conceptualised, manifested, and distorted under patriarchy and capitalism. Ukamaka, your fiction beautifully examines motherhood in all its complexity—across violence, love, mythology, and resistance. Ololade, your work on digital cultures and African feminisms offers sharp insights into how motherhood is surveilled, regulated, and/or reimagined in our current tech and social systems. Together, you hold the space to ask: In what ways do capitalism and patriarchy commodify or distort the concept of motherhood in African societies? What does reproductive autonomy in an Afro-feminist future look like? How do digital technologies and platforms mediate the experience or politics of motherhood—through surveillance, representation, or the creation of alternative spaces for connection, resistance, and storytelling? How can we re-imagine African feminist thought in this digital age? What futures are we birthing—and who gets to define care, autonomy, or kinship?

Ukamaka: I love this preface a lot, Yvonne. Thank you so much. I will reflect on this in preparation for the conversation. 

Ukamaka: I keep returning to Yvonne’s excellent preface, especially the point she made about how motherhood in contemporary times/digital age is “conceptualised, manifested, and distorted under patriarchy and capitalism.” I  am very moved by that question, especially because I am caring for and raising my children while living thousands of miles away from them. They are in Nigeria. I am in the United States. We are working to close the distance, but for now, this is our reality.

And so, the question that haunts me each day during my interactions with my children is: What does mothering even mean when the mother is so far away from her children? What do I do with this guilt I wrestle with every day, this guilt that’s spurned by the idea that a good mother is the one who stays close to home?

I was raised by women who made sure that their children never went hungry, women who worked hard, toiling to meet their children’s needs; women who would eat stones or sawdust, so long as their children had corn to eat. My late grandmother had to move to Cameroon to start a business, with which she sustained her children after her husband had died. My mother slept little, waking at 5 am every weekday to prepare the food she sold at the market. She would return in the evenings, exhausted, and yet she would head back to the kitchen late in the night to prepare the foodstuffs for the next day. Sometimes, she was up until past 11 pm. It was an endless circle. I remember one time when my dad was struck by a debilitating illness, and my mother hefted the financial and emotional burden all by herself. But then, though she lived with us as her own mother lived with her children, my mother was mostly not home during the day, when we, the children, trounced about from street to street, when the street beat us into shape. She couldn’t possibly be there to stringently watch us. If she did, we would starve.

And now, here I am in the United States, working long hours and sending all I can home to my children so that they can have easier lives, without lack. My two daughters are in university. I like to think that I am carrying forth that tradition I had inherited from my late grandmother and my mother. Now, though, that physical distance from my children is wider, in thousands of miles. Yes, we speak over the phone every day. We are always on video calls. I am the first point of call when they are ill, when they panic, when they want to gossip and laugh. I know more about my children than I know myself. But then, even though I like to pat myself on the back for continuing the tradition of the women who raised me, I am also haunted by that old notion that the good mom is the one who’s closer to home.

It’s a quandary, you see. But it is one I find interesting. I wonder what you think about this, Ololade, considering your work on how motherhood is surveilled in this digital age.

Ololade: Thank you for starting this, Ukamaka. One of the most recent feelings and conclusions I have been getting to in the past month, and largely because my own mother just passed away, relatively young, is: What is the joy of motherhood when our mothers are dying? I will eventually flesh out my full thoughts in a personal essay, but what got me here was a reflection of Buchi Emecheta’s novel and Nnu Ego’s end before she could, in the full sense, enjoy the fruits of her labour. 

My mother is/was an incredible mother. There is perhaps no adjective that can fully quantify just how much I am blessed to have been birthed and raised by Kehinde. My mother was also every Nigerian woman/mother dealing with and negotiating her place and life through mountains of patriarchy at home, work, a husband who wanted to clip her wings, colleagues who thought her audacious… As a young mother myself, my model of motherhood was both my mom and also not my mom. I wanted to replicate the joy, love, care and comfort I always found in her. But even as my mother eventually refused the mountains confining her and realised that she could be her full self and a loving mother at the same time, that realisation came much later in her life (about ten years before her death). My biggest heartbreak today comes from the fact that her eventual refusal to compromise did not erase the years of stifling her dreams. I am a mother to a two-year-old child, and a wise woman once told me he would not remember your absences (going on research trips or fellowships out of state), but what he will remember is when your presence as a fulfilled person, when he tells his friends glowing proudly, “That’s ’s my mom.” As a matter of fact, my own proudest moments were during moments of the realisations of my mother’s ambitions: when she earned her PhD, got her first fully funded expert visit to the US, expert invites to organisations within Nigeria, became Dean of her faculty, and just weeks before her death, was about to be nominated as Rector of a polytechnic. I am/was so proud of my mother, not just as the beautiful, incredibly brilliant woman she is, but as the woman becoming her own wildest dreams. 

I do not feel guilt for leaving my child for weeks or months because I hope my child shares even a speck of my lens in how I viewed my own mother. But that is also because I was intentional about community. My child’s father is a parent who works from home and is grounded. My grandmother lives with us, and my aunt lives just a few minutes away. My child has many “parents,” and I know that as he grows older and wiser, he will see just how much love and community make us better people. I am not abandoning him, but I am creating a model of what seeking and making achievement can look like. I want him to see me as both a devoted parent who loves him so much and also a complete person. I can only give what I feel. If I feel underwhelmed, dejected and full of regret about a project I turned down, I raise a child who feels the resentment building in me and the what-ifs that would form an invisible barrier between our relationship. 

Especially because this is also a burden in our world that is often feminised. Men go off all the time, and mothers are essentialized as the parents who should be entirely grounded and available. I would argue (with all my soul and grief) that motherhood should not be a singular tale of self-sacrifice and deferred dreams, but a tale of living a fully realised life. That is the true joy of motherhood. 

Regarding the point that motherhood is even more heavily surveilled in the digital age, especially with influencers taking to social media every three business days to guilt-trip and shame women, I would say that technology also affords us tools that redefine the concepts of absence and presence. My child and I have long animated talks on video calls, where we give virtual high-fives, he tells me colours he has just learned, and tries to feed me and give me his drink. Children have vivid make-believe imaginations at this age, and I capitalise on that to create scenarios that make them laugh so hard. Such that when I see him, it is like I never left, only that we can now share the most comforting, warm hugs. 

Ukamaka, how do you react to the naysayers who make subtle or not-so-subtle remarks about women’s ambitions as inherently selfish or harmful to children? What insights have you gotten from your children about how they see you and what your life as one of Africa’s most accomplished writers and academics offers them as they weave their own ambitions?

Ololade: One more thing: Maybe I am more morbid now or more aware of the subtext of mortality affecting our lives, but I realise that there is a trade-off here that we cannot fully grasp in conversations about guilt or otherwise. But what makes me reject guilt even more now is that I would rather use technology to redefine my presence to my child while I chase my ambitions, when the alternative could be the permanent silence and absence that death brings, worse off when death makes deferred dreams permanently unattainable. I’d ask people to read this carefully and with nuance, after all, I only lost my mom a month ago!

Ukamaka: This is so profound, Ololade. I will be thinking about this a lot.

I think in some cases, guilt has no meaningful use, no value, especially when it translates to perpetual self-loathing, when it folds your arms and legs and leaves you in a permanent state of dejection. For me, though, I consider guilt to be on a spectrum, and what I feel has been a necessary and healthy emotion; it’s the buzz in the back of the ears, it keeps me alert. I am not crippled by it. No, not at all. I am also not kneecapped by criticisms from people who have notions about what a mother should do and where she should be. Yes, my ears are often primed to listen to them, and I frequently discuss the criticisms I receive—I mean, how could I not, when they come from members of my extended family? Shutting out those voices is akin to cutting off family, which is not something I am inclined to do under these circumstances. Including them, along with the support I have also received from family, in this long narrative of motherhood, gives a full picture of how things are.

And what comes to mind each time I reckon with the criticism, especially, is that moment in Flora Nwapa’s Efuru, when Ajanupu urges our eponymous character, Efuru, to wait one more year before leaving the missing husband. “I have no reason whatever for asking you to stay,” she tells Efuru, “but stay.” However, on a closer read, we realise that there really was a reason she asked Efuru to wait a little longer: it is because the community watches, judges; the community is actively involved in one’s daily life. And this community is not a singular, mob-like zombie; it is a collective of people who, in one moment, can be intensely critical of your choices, but in the next moment are intensely protective of you. They can make, break, and mend you. It’s an interesting complication, and my community is that complicated. I had an aunt who once called to ask why I had “abandoned” my children. The next time, another aunt said she was praying for my promotion at the university where I currently teach. “You are the first professor,” this second aunt told me, “please work well and make us proud.” And then there are my parents, my dad and mom, who walk about town, reminding everyone that they are parents to a professor. It makes me smile. My mom insists that she should be addressed as ‘Nne Professor’ (the mother of a professor).

It’s fascinating, you see, how complex these things are. And Ajanupu understood this. No matter how strong and powerful she was (and she really was a force of nature), she privately understood that the community’s perception of a person could muddy that person’s dignity and their economic standing; the community would also rise to one’s defence. She tells Efuru, “After a year and you marry again, nobody in this world will raise an accusing finger at you and say you have not done well.”

I think I wrestle with guilt more because of the duration I’ve been away. And I think that reckoning with it has been useful; it is why we (my children and I) have drawn up a plan that’s perfect. They understand and encourage me in ways no one else does. It’s a gift to have two daughters and a son who are my greatest cheerleaders, and who love what I do so much that my first child is considering a career in film, and my second is already writing poetry. It’s the greatest gift.

Ololade: This is incredible. I hear you about how the nay voices come from within one’s own family! And oh yes, children understanding and admiring you is the greatest gift of all! 

My own mother was an academic who birthed a budding academic. A feminist who birthed an even more rad feminist. And the trajectory of my life so far has been from my mother’s intentionality. She was intentional about the books I read. I was reading Emecheta, Richard Wright, Achebe, Tutuola, and more as a preteen. Even the movies I watched were intentionally selected. I would often joke and say to my mother that she crafted me like those videos that went viral a couple of years ago, where people pour water labelled with different things as a metaphor for the things that make up people. For me, the water jar that became Ololade was filled with bowls of book smarts, curiosity, an aversion to injustice, empathy, confidence and a hint of coconut head, so it was almost inevitable I become what I am now an feminist researcher, editor, civil society consultant working to document and historicize African women as they redefine and reimagine technology outside of its capitalist, patriarchal, extractive material conditions. 

And this brings me to a question I have been reflecting on, about what it means to raise children with critical consciousness. What does it mean to do activist-parenting in this age? Especially in the age of the internet, which socialises children faster than even in-person interactions. Where red pill podcasts are desensitising boys and indoctrinating girls and dehumanising those in between?

Ukamaka: There is this scene in Purple Hibiscus that stays with me: Kambili and Jaja had just returned from Nsukka (this was after their grandfather, Papa Nnukwu’s death), and Jaja needed a private moment and so asked his father for the key to his room, The father, scandalized and enraged by this, asked if Jaja was planning to go in there and masturbate. The narrator, Kambili, lets us know that they weren’t allowed to lock their doors; their father was obsessively controlling, curating what they read, watched, ate, wore, and with whom they talked, their entire lives. Later on, we learn that as a boy, their father had been severely abused by the priest in whose care he had been placed; the priest had soaked the young boy’s hands in hot water because he had caught him “committing sin” against his own body. Now a father himself, he basted his own children’s feet with hot water.

This scene evokes the cyclical nature and consequences of irrational fear. Fear can be a good thing; it can keep you alert to the times. However, irrational fear is harmful. Irrational fear breeds the hunger for control. It inadvertently stirs rebellion because that child, eventually drained by the abuse of power, grows rebellious. We see how it turns out for Kambili’s family in the end.

Now compare the above scene with the moments in Nsukka, where Aunty Ngozi encouraged open conversation among her children. Even when she disagreed with them, there’s a sense that you get that this atmosphere was rid of toxic control. For example, Aunty Ngozi’s daughter, Amaka, refused to take on an English name for her confirmation as required by her Catholic church, and she articulated the reasoning behind this refusal carefully. Kambili could never have done such in her father’s home; her father viciously punished his children for holding differing opinions. The result of such excessive control? Kambili was almost muted, stunted, though brilliant and perceptive and observant. Amaka, out of frustration, told her mother that Kambili behaved like “sheep.” Ade Coker, the journalist who worked for the father, had inferred this much earlier; he said that the children were “so quiet.”

Am I terrified of the media prevalent these days? Of course I am. The fear of what my children consume can be crippling. But what I have learned to do is hold rational, open conversations about those subjects I find quarrelsome. My children are already eighteen or older. As a parent, you want to believe that you have laid a good foundation over the past years that will now serve as their guide as they navigate the present. What I do these days is to model the kind of ideals I hope they lean toward. For example, I recommend films and during our conversations, I explain why I loved those films: what I think they are contributing, the gaps I think they have found. And I encourage my children to also share what they have seen lately and why they watched them (not necessarily to justify their choices, but to sell it to me so I can watch it too). I want to believe that by articulating the reasoning behind certain choices, they begin to reevaluate certain tastes. And not just with films, but also books, podcasts, and so forth.

I want to believe that this modelling has been successful. I can’t curate and control what they consume, but I can bring them into my own world of stories and articulate why I am drawn to those stories. And by doing this, they see the benefits of examining what they consume.

Yvonne: Have you found that your children ever challenge your own tastes or assumptions about media or ideology? What has that taught you about evolving together with them as they grow into their own feminist consciousness?

Ukamaka: We have not really disagreed strongly on any of the media we individually consume or our beliefs, which mostly align. The only mild disagreement would be their love for Korean dramas, which, no matter how much I have tried, I still haven’t been able to love. Maybe it is the overdramatic love stories or the unique characterisations and pacing. Or maybe I’m too much of a film snob. Or I’ve become too narrow-minded. I probably just need to make time, sit down, and watch a K-Drama through to the end. Anyway, the last time my daughters tried to sell me a trending K-Drama, and I didn’t buy into it, my second child shook her head at me and said, “You have no taste.” That pinched a little, ha!

But I love the women they have become. My daughters, especially, have changed my notions of marriage, the way I see the world, really. They said things to me that made me feel better about my decisions. I think what makes the world easier these days is knowing that my daughters truly see me. They have closely followed my journey. They saw me through my most depressive episodes. And so, seeing the women they have become — women who refuse to shrink themselves for anyone, no matter what — has made the past months bearable.

Yvonne: I love this! (I’m also a big fan of K-Dramas, lmao. But with the exception of Squid Games, I am the only one who watches K-Ent in my family—just like you, my family don’t really feel drawn to them.) In what ways have your daughters changed your notion of marriage?

Ukamaka: I’ve made it a duty to watch at least three K-Dramas at the end of this summer semester, so I can prove to them that I have taste. In terms of how they have changed my view of marriage, I think they have made me even more aware and intentional in the stories I write. For them, marriage has evolved beyond the traditional expectation it once held for girls, as I knew it when I was young. Now, to my daughters, it’s a question of necessity. Why marriage? Why commit to a person in such a way just because society expects you to? 

And of course, they ask these important questions because they intimately know my story, my mother’s story, and the stories of the mothers before me. And they acknowledge the work the women before them had to do so that the generation coming after them (my daughters, and so forth) can make different choices.

I had an interesting conversation with my second daughter after she read my novel, Ogadinma. Of course, she’s proud of me, and she brags about me. But she had—let’s just say—strong opinions. But what I appreciated in it all is that she reckoned with the period the story is set in and criticised it through that historical lens.

So, I must say that what my daughters, who I love very much, have done is make me more intentional with my stories and the women who populate those stories. I am currently working on a new book, which terrifies me. It terrifies me because I will share a draft with them when it’s ready. And honestly, I am not sure I can handle their oft-biting feedback. Ha!

Ololade: That’s what daughters are meant to do, ha! I was my mother’s biggest critic, just as I was her biggest hype woman. But it was all from a place of love, and as I would tell her, I am helping her build her character and develop a well-rounded response to external critics. You already have your very own feedback pool at home! I also think I see this as an indication of the incredible job you did raising young people who are actively thinking and unpacking what is often normalised about our lives. You are big goals for me!

Yvonne: Thank you for sharing this, Ukamaka. That your daughters see you so clearly and offer you both love and critique speaks volumes about the kind of space you’ve nurtured with them. Ololade, how do you think African feminist parents (and caregivers) can build counter-publics or resistant knowledge ecosystems to challenge the harmful ideologies being spread through social media and red pill content? Additionally, if you had to curate a digital or narrative “water jar” for your son, what books, media, histories, or rituals would you want to pour into it?

Ololade: I am a big fan of community. I am learning from those who have done this before me. I know now to reach out to Ukamaka for wisdom as my child grows. In the same way, I consider people like my child’s godmother and Prof. Uju Anya great examples of intentional activist-parents. 

For my child, his water jar will be a blend of histories about his Nigerian/Yoruba descent and also the reality of being a Black child in the US. It will be everyday lessons of how to be kind, empathetic and stand up for the truth. It is still pretty early (my child is only 3 years old!), but I am very intentional about raising a child who is not afraid to be vulnerable or talk at length and passionately about things he loves.

Yvonne: You’ve talked about mothers as labourers, builders, thinkers. In what ways do you think the category of “mother” needs to be decolonised or disaggregated in African feminist thought today?

Ololade: Mother as eternal worker, mother as deferred dreams. Mother as opposition and someone we must decanter. The first part of this already speaks for itself. It is expected that Mother’s Day is an event to see people celebrating mothers for how they gave their all, their sense of self, with no careful acknowledgement of this sacrifice. For the many women who are living as half of their full selves every day. 

The latter part of this comes from the way motherhood often clashes with daughterhood. When mothers who internalise loss of self want to replicate that containment with their daughter, because for them, that is how you navigate a system of male authority. And we see so many young women share profound thoughts that they had to decenter their mothers from their lives. As someone whose life was made richer by my mother, I sincerely hope for a future where our daughters and the ones that come after us look to their mothers (biological and non-biological) for wisdom and strategies. That our politics are not centred on how we can be different, but how we can sustain and continue.

Yvonne: Both of you speak to the community as a survival mechanism—whether in Nigeria or the diaspora. How do you imagine a future where caregiving is more communal and less gendered or biologically assigned? What role do kinship networks, chosen families, or even digital sisterhoods play in making that future possible?

Ukamaka: I think caregiving is already communal where I come from. And while we have associations for women in my hometown, for example, whether it is associations for married women (Umu Iyom) or the associations of the daughters (Umu Ada), the bond of community doesn’t really end there. Yes, gender plays a major role in the way our community is structured, whether through labour or social participation, but we are not isolated from other members of the community (the fathers, the sons, the in-laws, extended families). We have a saying, Nwanne di na mba, which essentially says you can find and build kinship even in strange lands. 

And strange lands stretch beyond meeting people face to face to include contemporary virtual landscapes. I’ve had to attend meetings over Zoom and WhatsApp. And I’ve had deeply moving instances where we post photos to update each other on our physical well-being. A member of my community likes to post this as a reminder; he would say, “Please send your photos so that I don’t forget my people’s faces.” I think that sentiment is deeply touching and lovely. And so, what we have done is create a sort of digital album that is akin to those photo albums that we keep under our parlour tables, which we update with new photographs, so that we remember our people.

Kinship networks are integral. It extends beyond just bloodlines to include new families built through marriage, families built over digital platforms, families of like minds congregating outside of Nigeria and meeting especially over social media, Zoom, etc., to check in on each other, to sustain that strong bond and that responsibility of care, so that no one is ever alone or forgotten.

I will add that our idea of care, which we continue, especially in this era of digital migration and algorithmic pressures, is Afro-feminist. We do not relegate that labour of care and love and support to just the woman.

Yvonne: And as we reimagine what motherhood can look like for future generations, how do we reckon with technologies like surrogacy that offer new paths to parenthood, but also raise ethical concerns around power, class, and bodily autonomy?

Ukamaka: Surrogacy remains an old, fragile subject, and I am glad we continue to have conversations about it, not just in our daily lives or on social media, but also in our stories. It is one of the central concerns in Half of a Yellow Sun, where Odenigbo’s mother brought in the young, poor girl, Amala, and coaxed her into sleeping with her son so as to bear a child for him. We see this also in Efuru, where a suggestion is made for Efuru’s maid, Ogea, who is from an extremely poor family, to be offered up as a wife to her madam’s husband, for the sole purpose of raising children. What’s constant in these instances is the economic factor that made such exploitation, or even a suggestion of it, possible.

There are no clear answers for how to reckon with or resolve this old subject, but I like that it continues to provoke conversations and reveal tensions in the community, especially when class and power are taken into consideration.

Ololade: I wish for a future where we actively decenter this cultural shame and classist cultures that force women to technologies like surrogacy without properly investigating how this affects the often poor women surrogates (with the exception of altruistic surrogacy). Surrogacy is such a complex issue that needs a complex argument, and oftentimes, there is so much defensiveness and ego that we cannot have productive conversations about this. Can surrogacy be exploitative? Yes. Do most women who lend their bodies to commercial surrogacy do so out of economic lack? Yes.  Does surrogacy nonetheless represent some of the most transformative reproductive victories for women? Yes. Is surrogacy an option often open only to women from a certain class margin? Yes. Has it also become a weirdly celebrated pop-culture fashion where upwardly mobile women transfer the pain and body changes of pregnancy to less privileged women? Yes. Should we have honest no-ego conversations about these nuances of power, class and bodily autonomy that come with surrogacy? Yes.

When we say mothering should be radically transformed, it exceeds the physicality of birthing children and mothering them. Most African traditions understand motherhood as beyond birthing children. It is fundamentally about what legacies we normalise for those who come after us. I am a daughter of many mothers, beyond my birth mother. I am an ideological daughter of many Afro-descended feminist foremothers. They teach me every day to identify structures of oppression that have contained African women for years. They teach me why I must decolonise my mind. They teach me about community mothering and othermothering (Patricia Hill Collins) that decants the Eurocentric hyper-focus on the nuclear family. The internet today offers us counterpublic spaces for care and mothering, even with all the fractures that come with that hyper-distracting and soulless attention economy. Yet, against the odds, feminists take up digital labour and community organising tasks that connect women who may never meet each other directly but are connected in each other’s shared experiences. We create communities of memory, love, resistance and hope. We need to remake how we and the ones that come after us see ourselves,  our possibilities and our relationship to power. These radical possibilities of othermothering are still a work in progress, but it is our most revolutionary practice yet, and it will be our salvation in this increasingly hostile world.