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Browsers and phone girls: the intricate socialities of friendship, trust and cyberlove in Nima (Accra)

Cassiman, Ann (2018) — Africa

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DOI: 10.1017/s0001972017001152 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   Ghana
Tags:   AI-Enabled Fraud, Cyber Fraud, Emotional Manipulation, Ethnography, Fake Profiles, Ghana, Online Trust, Romance Scams
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Synopsis

            
This publication examines how youth in the Nima zongo of Accra organize social life around everyday friendship, mobility, and online connections, and how these forms of relatedness shape their ambitions and daily realities. The study focuses on “bases”— informal, age-mate networks named after dream spaces such as Chicago or Brooklyn—where friends gather, share resources, and imagine futures beyond the harsh conditions of their neighborhood. It traces how these bases function as horizontal kinship-like ties that replace or supplement traditional kinship in a migratory, ethnically mixed urban context, enabling mutual aid, trust, and collective dreaming, even as they also generate obligation, competition, and conflict. Methodologically, the author combines ethnographic observation with interviews, detailing both in-person interactions in shared spaces and the emergence of online practices. The analysis centers on a group of young men and women who engage in browsing and online friendship with men abroad, often described as paypals or cyberlovers. These online relationships rely on localized networks of trust and reciprocity formed through the bases, while introducing new forms of aspiration, material risk, and moral ambiguity. The narrative shows how cyber activity can open avenues for wealth and status, yet also destabilize established social norms around loyalty, confidentiality, and mutual aid. The principal finding is that online love and deception are interwoven with real-world socialities: trust and ambivalence coexist as youths leverage both face-to-face bonds and virtual connections to pursue mobility and improvement. The article suggests that these dynamics contribute to a broader reconfiguration of social life in Nima, where friendship remains a crucial, but double-edged, resource for navigating precarity, opportunity, and the lure of distant possibilities.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper raises, but does not resolve, whether paypals constitute a new category of transactional virtual lovers comparable to local sugar-daddy relationships. It provides little direct evidence from the foreign contacts themselves, leaving their experiences, motivations, and awareness of deception largely inferred.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Qualitative ethnographic research in Nima, Accra, conducted from June to August 2014 and in April 2015. The author draws on hanging out in the neighborhood, conversations with young men and women, informant accounts, and observations of friendship bases, cybercafés, browsers, and phone girls.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The study is a localized qualitative account centered on Nima and on accounts from browsers, phone girls, and community members. It does not provide systematic prevalence estimates, financial-transfer data, a stated sample size, or direct interviews with the foreign people targeted by the scams. Some broader claims are explicitly reported as rumors or community assertions.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Further research could examine whether virtual relationships with foreign “paypals” function as a form of transactional “sugar daddy” relationship extended into online settings.

          

              

    
    

        
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