Afropolitan Influence: Gender, Comedy, and Social Media in Global Africa

Gender and humor have always been intimately related. In many societies, comedy is traditionally understood as a masculine pursuit, and women’s existence in comedic spaces has been subject to intense scrutiny by male commentators. Africa’s burgeoning stand-up comedy scene is an important site of contestation in this regard, but in recent years social media has afforded opportunities for African women to bypass traditional industry gatekeepers. In online spaces like Instagram, TikTok, and X (Twitter), African women creators have built massive audiences that cross national and continental boundaries. In this project, I draw on interviews with three prominent female comedy creators—Stella Dlangalala, Thenjiwe Mosely, and Beverly Adaeze—and use their work to shed light on how female comedians negotiate their position(s) in digital spaces rooted in Nigeria, South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond. While social media affords autonomy to performers, success as a comedian-influencer demands more from women than jokes. Feminism, Afropolitanism, and commodification intertwine in the stories of these performers. The gendered body, viewed through the lens of parasocial intimacy that short-form video facilitates, emerges as a site of great significance. In addition, I argue for greater critical attention to what I call “algorithmic mystery”—the influence of opaque social media algorithms in promoting, maintaining, and severing digital connections.