Africa’s Legends: digital technologies, aesthetics and middle-class aspirations in Ghanaian games and comics

Africa’s Legends is a mobile application developed by the Ghanaian game development company Leti Arts in 2012. The app consists of one game and two comics about eight ‘African’ superheroes. This article aims to give insight into the intersection of digital technologies and social class; it contributes to theorizing digital technologies as a means to express middle-class aesthetics, aspirations and senses of being in the world. It does so by showing how Africa’s Legends’ production process, particularly its aesthetics, is informed by historically embedded ideas about cultural heritage and notions about design and style. We trace how the upper middle-class background of the producers informs the production, distribution and reception of the app. According to the producers, digital technologies like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator allow Africa’s Legends to be of the appropriate quality necessary to create a ‘new African’ style and to reach a global audience. However, Ghanaians of a less privileged background do not share this interpretation, which suggests that digital technologies mediate specific class aesthetics and aspirations.