FROM ORAL TO MACHINE MEMORY: PRESERVING AFRICAN FOLKLORE THROUGH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

For centuries, African societies have sustained their heritage through oral tradition—a living archive of wisdom, history, and moral instruction. Myths, folktales, and proverbs, which are integral components of folklore, have long served to transmit collective memory and social ethics. In the twenty-first century, the digital era, globalisation and technological dominance pose significant threats to the preservation of these intangible cultural heritages. This paper, guided by Postcolonial Theory and Cultural Memory Theory, examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can serve as a new griot—a digital custodian capable of preserving, translating, and regenerating African folklore. Postcolonial Theory provides a framework for critiquing technological dominance and emphasising the need for African agency in digital preservation, while Cultural Memory Theory offers a lens for understanding how ancestral memory can migrate from oral performance to machine-mediated forms of preservation. Through natural language processing, machine learning, and voice-synthesis technologies, AI can document endangered languages, reconstruct lost narratives, and analyse symbolic motifs. However, the paper also interrogates ethical concerns surrounding data ownership, cultural misrepresentation, and the spiritual implications of encoding cultural memory in machines. Ultimately, it argues that, when guided by indigenous scholars and cultural custodians, AI can evolve from a potential instrument of cultural erasure into a means of cultural sustainability, bridging ancestral wisdom with the technological consciousness of the future.