By Seyi Egbewole
Key takeaways
• Technology is already in people’s hands. The real need is building the thinking and responsibility behind how it is used for storytelling.
• Ethics must be part of storytelling from the start. Consent, representation, and purpose shape whether stories benefit communities or not.
• Bringing older and younger generations together creates deeper learning when the space is structured for both sides to share experience and perspective.
From 9th to 11th March 2026, we held a three-day creative capacity-building workshop in Ilorin, Kwara State. This workshop titled “Digital Storytelling for Ethical Technology and Intergenerational Collaboration” was part of the Build-Tech Project in partnership with the Hadis Foundation and Luminate.
Through this workshop, we brought together 38 people of different backgrounds in a room for an amazing experience. Some of the participants were university students and young professionals, while others were journalists, lecturers, radio broadcasters, and community elders with decades of experience in media and public life. Participants were divided into two groups: CNNs (Connected New Navigators) and BBCs (Born Before Computers). The idea was that both groups had something the other needed, and that a well-designed workshop could encourage them to share it.
That is what we tried to do, but by the end, we had learned a few things ourselves.
The tool is never the real problem
One of the first things that became clear was that the phone was not the barrier. Everyone in that room already had one. Most of the younger participants were already creating content, posting, and sharing. The gap was not access to a camera or a platform, but in knowing what to do with the access they already had.
Photography and visual storytelling were among the most discussed sessions across both days. What stayed with participants is the idea that every image is a decision. This includes where the camera points, what is included in the frame, and what is left out. These are choices that carry responsibility in the act of storytelling. One participant summed it up plainly: before the workshop, he took pictures without much planning. After it, he had a clearer sense of what steps to follow before he even picked up his phone to document something.
Ethics is not a separate conversation
The sessions on field ethics, consent, and responsible content creation in digital storytelling were important talking points in the workshop. They were built into the core of what participants learned, and what became clear is that ethics is required in the same conversation as storytelling.
When one goes into a community to document something, important questions must be asked, like who gets to speak, how are they framed, are the questions well understood, what are the participants agreeing to, does the story serve the community or who does it benefit, etc. These are the questions that determine whether community storytelling is something a community benefits from or something done to them.
From our evaluations, participants left with a framework for approaching those questions before they go into the field, and ensuring ethical considerations when they begin to utilise digital storytelling.
Old and young people may not automatically understand each other, but they can
The intergenerational dialogue was the part of the workshop that most participants brought up when asked what stood out. What that revealed is how people from different generations are just fundamentally the same, and are only dealing with similar things from very different angles.
Older participants talked about what it meant to report carefully, to verify, to carry professional responsibility for what gets published or reported at a time when the process was still very much manual. While younger participants talked about speed, about what it feels like when misinformation spreads before you can correct it, and about how AI is already changing what they do. For example, the conversation about the effect of technology in journalism landed differently depending on whether the participant came of age before the internet or inside it. Although all participants still enjoyed the conversation.
The BBC-CNN format taught us that this kind of exchange does not happen automatically. It needs structure and facilitation that holds space for both sides to speak and to listen. When that structure is in place, the learning is real and it goes in both directions. The elders learn from the young people, and the young learn from the elderly population.
Practical work is super super important for real learning
The sessions that produced the most visible shift in participants were the practical ones, such as the photography exercises, the fieldwork, the editing and review. This isn’t because the theory was not valuable, but because the theory only became real when participants had to apply it under their own judgment in an actual environment.
Going into the field and coming back with footage or photographs that had to be reviewed and discussed allowed our participants to apply the theoretical knowledge we had already discussed. Participants had to make real decisions about the stories they wanted to tell, engage in a consent conversation with the subject, and apply technical skills of photography or content creation.
This is something we will carry into how we design our future work. The balance between theory and practice matters, and participants showed us clearly which side of that balance produces the most learning.
Storytelling is already happening, the question is whether it is happening well
Perhaps the most important thing the workshop confirmed is that the problem isn’t that young Nigerians are not telling stories, because they are. They are documenting communities, sharing experiences, producing content at a pace and scale that no formal training programme can keep up with. The question is whether any of that is being done with the frameworks to do it responsibly, and as a tool for positive social contribution. This applies to photography, to documentary, and to every form of digital content creation. The technology is already in people’s hands, and what matters is the thinking that should sit behind how it is used.
What we are building toward
The workshop is the first part of this project, and the second part is already in motion. On the 9th of this month, we will be hosting a public exhibition to show what participants have produced, and the kinds of stories they have to tell through their works.
Beyond our immediate next steps, the wider argument we are making is that ethical digital storytelling is a skill and can be taught. It should be taught across generations, and to both professionals and young people. When you put different people from different backgrounds in the same room and give them real things to learn and real work to do together, there is shared knowledge that couldn’t be achieved in isolation. There are many stories to be told and they can be tools to drive positive societal change.
We saw that in Ilorin, and we want to see more of it across Nigeria.
Seyi Egbewole is a Researcher at Saving African Youths Dream Initiative (SAYDi)
