From Virtual Exile to Digital Futures: The Nigerian Entertainment Industry’s Quest to Re-Enchant “Africa”

Amidst economic austerity and institutionalized gerontocracy and tribalism, Southern Nigerian youth experience persistent disillusionment with their national leadership. Global media has fueled a longing for a more viable “elsewhere”—a phenomenon popularly referred to as “virtual exile” or “mental secession” in the megacity of Lagos. Yet, young people also invest in digital technology with the hope of “making it from Africa.” Over the past decade, Lagos has emerged as a global entertainment hub, propelled by the virality of Nigerian content on streaming and social media platforms. This article examines how algorithmic imaginaries interact with the phenomenology of place. It situates Nigerian engagement with digital media within Africanist histories of technology’s incorporation into local cosmologies. It then presents empirical data collected through long-term ethnographic research in the Afrobeats industry, focusing on African and Afro-diasporic platform representatives on the one hand, and Lagos aspiring youth on the other. The article traces digital entrepreneurship’s function as both an economic strategy and an ideological project—one that re-enchants places and futures that otherwise seem hopeless. As digital professionals seek to appeal to the “global” gaze, this article shows that their efforts operate largely inwardly by reshaping local subjectivities. Nigerian youth embrace new technology’s promise of extraordinary transformation with an intentionality akin—and in many ways tied—to faith. Techno-optimist discourse can then be seen as a strategy from below to cultivate agency and commitment to place under systemic failure.