Seminars

Bhalisa 6 | The politics of Intermediation in the building of digital identification systems | Temple Campus Rome, July 13 - 4, 2026

The 6th Meeting of the Bhalisa Network

Temple Rome, July 13 and 14, 2026

The politics of Intermediation in the building of digital identification systems

Hosted by Temple Law with support from DigID and WISER.

Draft Programme is available here.

Intertwined vines: Homophily among French Huguenots in eighteenth-century Cape Colony

Presented by: 
Christie
Swanepoel
Homophily refers to the observation in networks that more connections are formed between nodes who share a similar background characteristic.

Liberated Africans and the abolition of debt imprisonment in the Gambia colony under the British West African Settlements,1866--1888

Presented by: 
Lamin
Manneh
In 1873, the Gambia colony became the first British West African colony to abolish debt imprisonment. The Gambia colony by abolishing debt imprisonment became part of a larger wave of mid-19th century advancements in progressive debtor reforms happening across the British Empire.

The costs of foreign capital

Presented by: 
Leigh
Gardner
Formal recognition of Liberia's sovereignty offered the government the opportunity to borrow on international markets that were growing rapidly during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Household, Future-making and Debt

Presented by: 
Deborah and Caitlin
James and Zaloom
How does a household come to exist? What tools do its members use to draw some together and expel others? How do households articulate with the spheres of economy and politics and their forms of power and control?

(Self-)purchase, obligation and the financial lives of enslaved and manumitted people in nineteenth-century Cape Town

Presented by: 
Kate
Ekama
This paper uses manumission as a lens through which to explore the financial lives of enslaved people in nineteenth-century Cape Town. Between 1825 and 1834, more than one thousand two hundred people were manumitted in the city, about a third of whom achieved that through (self-)purchase.

Networks, Institutions and the Failure of the Survey Law of 1874 in the Transvaal

Presented by: 
Lyndsey Frederick
Braun
This article concerns the birth and death of the proposed Survey Law of 1874 in the South African Republic (Transvaal), a law that promised to 'correct' flawed or fraudulent knowledge with an ongoing triangulation and a general survey of lands that would locate and map all aspects of geography for t

Everyday strategies of debt resistance: the case of fintech in Nigeria

Presented by: 
Shuaib
Jalal-Eddeen
This article examines the resistance strategies employed by fintech users in Jimeta, Nigeria against the violent techniques used by fintech companies to enforce loan repayments.

Debt and Financial Inclusion in Kenya: Digital Lending and Co-operative Societies

Presented by: 
Eric
Magale
Co-operatives have long been important institutions for low- to middle-income Kenyans, long before the financial inclusion discourse came about.

A Tale of Two Payment Systems: Debt and the Social Welfare State

Presented by: 
Erin
Torkelson
Over the past decade and a half the South African social grant payment system has changed several times -- but, debt has been part and parcel of each new system.

Balancing Competing Obligations: Sovereign Debt, the African Human Rights System, and the Pursuit of a Rights-Based Approach to African Debt

Presented by: 
Danny and Magalie
Bradlow and Masamba
Africa's sovereign debt crisis is exacerbating human rights vulnerabilities, yet the African human rights systems and institutions have remained largely absent from debt governance debates.

Pages

Subscribe to Seminars