Events
Law, Technology, and Development Learning Circle: Book Discussion: Biometric Digital ID in Africa: Identification, Rights and Power - Tony Roberts
About the Book
, edited by Gbenga Sesan and Tony Roberts, is the first collected edition book on biometric digital ID across Africa. Nine country case studies by African scholars provide the most comprehensive documentation of digital ID in their country to date. The chapter authors provide the most sustained conceptual analysis of the forces driving the rapid roll-out of biometric identification systems, asking who benefits, what are the impacts on human rights, and what power interests are served by the billions of dollars being invested in digital-ID and digital public infrastructure more widely? In none of the countries studied did citizens ask for the introduction of biometric digital-ID, prompting the question whose agenda is it? The evidence presented in the book suggests that an alignment of security, technology, funder and bureaucratic interests are driving this change and that already marginalised ethnic and low-income groups are often negatively impacted.
About the Speaker
Dr Tony Roberts is an Emeritus Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies. He has been working at the intersection of digital technologies, international development and social justice since 1988 as a volunteer, lecturer, practitioner, trustee and researcher. After lecturing in New Technology and Education at the University of East London, Tony founded and directed two international development agencies for over a decade each. He left Computer Aid International aged 48 to begin a PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London studying the used of participatory video in international development. He joined IDS after a postdoc in the Gender Tech Lab of the United Nations University, in Macau, China. Tony spent a decade at IDS where he established the African Digital Rights Network with whom he led a series of studies, published eight reports and nine books on digital rights. He is the series editor of the Digital Africa book series published by Zed Books/Bloomsbury. For a full list of Tony鈥檚 publications and blogs please see his website or Google Scholar.
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About the Learning Circle:
The Law, Technology and Development Learning Circle is an initiative of the GLOBE Centre, 果冻传媒 Law School and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM). It brings together staff and students across the 果冻传媒 who are interested in the regulatory, governance, human rights, and political economy challenges of technology in/and on society.
The group is convened by Dr. Siddharth de Souza Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new windowand Dr. Serena NatileLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window.