Biometric coloniality: digital consensus and the biometric state in Africa

Abstract

Abstract

en This article frames the concept of biometric coloniality of power in the Global South – to explain how alliances of powerful global institutions, big tech companies and the compliant emerging biometric states operate on the basis of a lucrative digital consensus to carry out techno-­capitalist biometric ID interventions, which reproduce colonial relations of domination. We use Nigeria’s experience and examples from other African countries to demonstrate that the emergence of biometric states is linked to specific interconnected spaces of biometric data struggle and exploitation where the uses/abuses of biometric data are performed and contested. This article maps out new biometric orders of power at multiple levels/scales, and explicitly draws out ways biometric categories and social hierarchies are used to produce racialised and gendered subjects. The article argues that biometric coloniality inherently creates a biometric state with a peculiar character of biometric dysfunctionality and authoritarianism, both effectively institutionalised to the exclusion and disempowerment of the citizens/biometric subjects. We conclude that the chain of unbridled extraction of digital data, its commodification and dispossession, which is bounded by digital consensus, can only be broken by the conscious awakening of digital subjects.