Some current transformations in the power of metrologies

For a long time measuring and thus shaping populations was a privilege of governments and an articulation of sovereignty. It was mainly governments who could establish the necessary infrastructure to quantify population. In the contemporary era, big data are everywhere, widely accessible and largely owned by private corporations active on the internet (like the American firms known by the acronym GAFA and the Chinese equivlent, BAT). Particularly in countries with a colonial history and weak resulting metrological infrastructures, governments have difficulties to establish and maintain their metrological sovereignty in their partnerships with the private banking and telecommunication companies. This paper prepares a few questions to examine related transformation as they happen in contemporary Ghana.