10th U6+ Consortium of African Universities International Conference

Rapid modernization, urbanization, and death of community elders are disrupting the traditional communication channels through which intangible cultural heritage in rural Kenya has historically been transmitted. The absence of intergenerational communication pathways has led to oral traditions communication gaps from the youth information ecosystem. The aim of this study is to develop Akamba school-centric model that leverages citizen journalism as an alternative communication channel to safeguard Kamba oral customary traditions. Specifically; to assess the awareness and perceptions of Kamba oral traditions among rural secondary school students; To build digital citizen journalism and ethnographic recording capacities within selected secondary schools; To develop a multimedia archive of Kamba folklore, proverbs, and customary laws through student-elder interactions and to evaluate the impact of the framework on intergenerational knowledge transfer and youth cultural identity. A qualitative approach through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study design, collaboratively in planning, action, observation, and reflection are employed. A relativist ontology is followed, which states that cultural realities and oral traditions are many, and socially constructed and co-constructed through human experiences and shared community narratives. The target population is students in public rural secondary schools, teachers of humanities and recognized community elders in Machakos, Kitui and Makueni counties. Purposive sampling is used to select the participating schools, teachers and students, and snowball sampling is used to identify the traditional custodians and community elders. The sample size of 96 participants; Three (3) different secondary schools (one in each county) with 60 students citizen journalists (20 in each school), 6 guiding teachers, and 30 community elders, making a total sample size of 96 participants. Multimedia data collection techniques include student-led semi-structured interviews, mobile audio-visual recordings of oral performances, reflective PAR field journals kept by participants, and post-framework focus group discussions (FGDs), all designed to rebuild direct communication links between students and elders. Data will be analysed using inductive thematic analysis to isolate core cultural motifs, narrative analysis to examine linguistic structure and metaphors, and participatory content curation with elders to ensure strict cultural validity. Findings include the creation of a comprehensive, open-access digital repository of Kamba oral heritage; a recorded increase in the transmission of knowledge between generations; a sense of cultural identity and digital literacy among rural youth participants; sustainable, youth-led channels of communication across generations; and a framework for the preservation of indigenous knowledge throughout sub-Saharan Africa.