Three questions about the multi-billion dollar biometric digital-ID industry:

Three questions about the multi-billion dollar biometric digital-ID industry:

1. There is no country where citizens called for biometric digital-ID – so in whose interests is it being imposed? 2. If human rights are entitlements due to all human beings unconditionally, why are govts making them conditional on biometric ID? 3. What is the logical end point if we allow states and corporations to conduct ever-more intrusive mass surveillance of our daily lives? I am constantly shocked to see the billions of dollars endlessly poured into biometric digital-ID systems…

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Decolonising Digital Public Infrastructure

Decolonising Digital Public Infrastructure

This post explores whether digital public infrastructure (DPI) can be considered to be a colonial technology and if so, what would be necessary to decolonise DPI? In recent years the agenda to impose biometric digital-ID across the globe has widened into a ‘digital public infrastructure’ that links biometric digital-ID systems to digital payments systems and data exchange platforms. This trilogy of technologies enables efficiencies in the state’s digital payments for social security entitlements to citizens such as pensions and benefits,…

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Digital Inclusion as Anti-Politics: a confession

Digital Inclusion as Anti-Politics: a confession

This blog is based on my input to the ICT4D-North workshop at Salford University. I was asked, “What are some emerging risks or blind spots in global digital inclusion efforts that we should be paying more attention to?” One blind spot is how digital inclusion projects work as a form of ‘anti-politics’. As you know, James Ferguson argued that the development industry often functions as an “anti-politics machine”. He argued that the development industry oversimplifies complex socio-economic problems and offers…

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Ten reasons not to use AI for development and ten routes to more responsible use

Ten reasons not to use AI for development and ten routes to more responsible use

The UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer says we should be mainlining AI directly into every part of government and the economy. The Foreign Secretary says he is planning to bring ‘AI into the heart of our work’.  However, there is a great deal of evidence about the harms that AI can cause. Here I outline ten reasons not to use generative AI, like ChatGPT, in international development or humanitarian work, while outlining how work on Responsible AI can address these…

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Welfare payments are going digital in Africa – but this isn’t helping those without internet access or smartphones

Welfare payments are going digital in Africa – but this isn’t helping those without internet access or smartphones

Read my article on digital social protection systems in the Conversation and join in the discussion: We conducted the largest study of its kind in 2023 through surveys and focus groups with domestic, disabled, migrant and home-based workers in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia bringing together organisations championing African workers’ rights, disability rights and digital rights. In speaking to workers’ leaders, civil society groups and government agencies administering social insurance systems, it became clear that the…

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Podcast: Governance And Digitization Of Social Protection For Informal Workers

Podcast: Governance And Digitization Of Social Protection For Informal Workers

In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first episode on the topic of GOVERNANCE. We have invited two guests to lay the groundwork for this block, to help us understand social protection governance, as well as the new concerns and potentials brought by digitization. We start with Tony Roberts. Tony is a researcher based at the Institute of Development Studies on the campus of the University of Sussex in the…

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Digital Citizenship and Digital Solidarity in Africa

Digital Citizenship and Digital Solidarity in Africa

The growth in the popularity of the internet around the world, as evidenced by growing user numbers, particularly in Africa, has enabled citizens to harness its power as a tool of agency, creating new global and transnational spaces for civic participation, advocacy, and social change…

Some African governments are spending millions to spy on their citizens – stifling debate and damaging democracy

Some African governments are spending millions to spy on their citizens – stifling debate and damaging democracy

Governments around the world use surveillance technology to monitor external threats to national security. Some African governments are also spending vast sums on mass surveillance of their own citizens.

They are using mobile phone spyware, internet interception devices, social media monitoring and biometric identity systems. Artificial intelligence for facial recognition and car number plate recognition is another digital surveillance technology in their growing toolkit…

Safety and regulating risks: who is safe in ‘safe cities’?

Safety and regulating risks: who is safe in ‘safe cities’?

This week the UK is set to host its first AI Safety Summit. It aims to bring together international governments, leading AI companies, civil society groups and research experts to consider the risks of AI and how they can be mitigated through governance and international collaboration.
Street surveillance camera and graphical representation of facial recognition screening…

Eve Hayes de Kalaf on Digital Identity

Eve Hayes de Kalaf on Digital Identity

In this edition of the Between the Lines podcast I talk to Dr. Eve Hayes de Kalaf about her book “Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner” In this important new book the author examines the complex and contradictory nature of state ID systems and challenges the assumption that the provision of “legal identity for all” will lead to the inclusion of all citizens…