A biometrics revolution is underway across the Global South. Undoubtedly boosted by security and anti-migration policies, biometrics is now also being deployed in the name of development and democracy. Over the last two decades, more than half of the countries in Africa have adopted biometrics to identify voters. Based on a multi-sited fieldwork, this research examines the role of vendors, donors, electoral assistance experts, and African political elites in the development of biometric voting. It retraces the trajectory of a technology that was initially promoted as a solution to crises. The research shows how biometrics has come to be associated with promises of fraud-free elections, peaceful democracy – and an Africa propelled into a technological future. This technological ‘solution’ has flourished against all odds. It has imposed itself as a standard, despite its exorbitant cost, resounding technological failures, and limited impact on the quality of elections (in the best-case scenario). The research also explores how this technopolitics shapes both the practices and conceptions of democracy. The technological solution reframes the very problems it was supposed to solve, yet is also an object of political struggle. Ultimately, analyzing social experiments conducted across Africa contributes to a deeper and more critical understanding of the interplay of technology, the market and politics.
WISER Seminar Papers
- WISER's TRUST seminar is hosted on-line every Monday afternoon from 16:00 - 17:00 SA time during the teaching semester. Forthcoming seminars are available here, and past events are detailed in our archive.
- Please register on Zoom in advance of the meeting on this link.
- Participants should please read the paper (below) prior to the seminar; it will typically be available by the Friday preceding the seminar.
In this semester, the Trust seminar will explore questions of credit and debt on the African continent. In contrast with the argument that trust and confidence are synonymous (most evident in the Edelman Trust Barometer and the reporting around it), some of the most convincing scholarship argues for the direct association of trust with credit. Other researchers, studying informal African institutions, have found credit everywhere on this continent, but little that can be associated with trust. Some state institutions (like SACCOs in Kenya) and simpler penalties, like efficient bankruptcy laws, seem also to be instrumental in shaping the politics of credit. One key driver of credit systems is a secondary market, which depends in part on institutions and information that derive from (and support) fiduciaries. These are especially important in the contemporary tensions between firm-based and individualised credit systems. The seminar series this semester will explore some of these dynamics, examining how they have shaped the cultures and politics of debt and credit from the precolonial to the contemporary period.