Fabricating the Digital Citizen

Description

Many African governments have begun implementing digital identification programs that should help register the ‘missing billion’ to fulfil the Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 ‘legal identity for all’. These technologies come in the form of biometric National Identification Numbers, digital ID cards and digital identity wallets. Building on recent research on ‘digital citizens’ (Isin/Ruppert 2020) and the ‘start-up state’ (Nair 2019), this presentation examines how sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff 2020) linked to digital identification technologies reconfigure imaginaries of the state and its citizens (Stepputat/Hansen 2001). By discussing preliminary results of my ongoing ethnographic field research on the digital ID in Sierra Leone, I suggest that the digital citizen appears to be less a bearer of rights than a cosmopolitan, tech-savvy subject who secures the political stability of the country by participating in and shaping the digital economy.

Period	01.10.2024
Event title	VAD Conference "Reconfigurations in Africa - and in African Studies"
Event type	Conference
Organisers	Association for African Studies in Germany e.V., University of Bayreuth
Location	Bayreuth, Germany, BavariaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International