ABSTRACT

The relationship between African Traditional Religions (ATRs) and young people is shifting in ways that neither scholarship on African religion nor the literature on digital religion has adequately tracked. A growing cohort of African and diaspora youth are engaging with ATR traditions through digital platforms including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and recent ethnographic evidence indicates that this engagement is neither superficial nor straightforwardly continuous with traditional practice. It is a complex negotiation involving disillusionment with inherited Abrahamic frameworks, political reclamation of African heritage, and the necessity of accessing traditions in diaspora contexts where physical communities are absent or inaccessible. This study adopts a qualitative, library-based research methodology employing critical literature review, content analysis, and hermeneutical interpretation of scholarly works on African Traditional Religion, digital religion, youth spirituality, and identity formation. The study further utilizes insights from the sociology of religion and religio-philosophical discourse to examine religious authority, identity negotiation, and knowledge transmission in digital ATR spaces. The paper examines three questions: What motivates young people to seek ATR identity and community through digital platforms? What forms of religious authority emerge and compete in digital ATR spaces, and how do they compare with traditional ones? And what does digital engagement mean for the intergenerational transmission of ATR knowledge? Drawing on empirical scholarship, including studies on African youth, religion, migration, and indigenous religion in the digital age, the paper argues that the binary between authentic tradition and digital simulation is philosophically unhelpful. The paper contributes to debates on religion and modernity, digital religion methodology, and the evolving sociology of ATR communities in Africa and the diaspora.