Unmasking Greenwashing in Africa: A Digital Oramedia Perspective on Environmental, Social, and Governance

Abstract

As Africa moves toward its goals for sustainable development, corporate reliance on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) narratives is growing, all the while the level of trust from stakeholders toward corporations continues to dwindle. This decline in trust is largely attributable to traditional public relations tactics used in Western countries that do not align with the realities of Africa. Utilising Kenya as a representative microcosm, this study investigates how digitally literate stakeholders collectively challenge performative corporate sustainability—specifically concerning recent controversies like the UAE carbon-offset land concessions—within the digital public sphere. Anchored on Frank Ugboajah's Oramedia theory, the research conceptualises social media (X, formerly Twitter) as a 'digital village' operating on traditional principles: multidirectional flow, communal consensus, and accountability; rejecting Western, one-way communication. Employing a convergent mixed-methods design, this study combines a quantitative survey of targeted digital professionals (N=38) with a longitudinal netnographic analysis (November 2023–March 2026) of fifteen high-engagement X discursive threads, encompassing over 20,000 peer-to-peer interactions. Civic responsibility is measured by quantifying public scepticism and real-time social media ‘greenwashing’ call-outs. Findings reveal digital stakeholders actively reject asymmetrical corporate broadcasts. They collaboratively use social media to expose disingenuous ESG claims in real-time, ensuring greenwashing fails to establish legitimacy and triggers reputational harm. Crucially, the data demonstrates that rather than digital interference distorting the 'village' consensus, rigorous peer-to-peer cross-checking acts as an epistemic filter that preserves authentic communal truth. This offers a critical lesson for global corporate governance: multinational entities must abandon imported PR tactics. Securing sustainable legitimacy requires embracing the localised, bidirectional engagement demanded by today’s digital villages.