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Paper short abstract

The paper examine the development freedoms and unfreedoms embedded in choices about DPI futures, arguing that DPI can either facilitate the inclusion and participation of citizens in civic and political life or automate and amplify existing patterns of exclusion and dis/advnatage.

Paper long abstract

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has become a site of development investment marketed as advancing SDG goals of legal identity for all and social protection provision. Critical voices express concern that DPI reproduces and automates existing inequality and in/exclusion. A stakeholder analysis of DPI actors in Ghana and Kenya is used to understand who is influential in shaping DPI futures, what interests are being advanced and who is being excluded. by current models of DPI and how is influential. This paper fills this gap in understanding who's freedoms are being expanded by DPI and who's expereiences unfreedoms and exclusion. The paper argues that many DPI futures are possible: ones in which DPI is an infrastructure of inclusive digital citizenship and ones in which DPI is an infrastructure of surveillance and digital authoritarianism. Through these lenses we uncover who has the most influence, power and freedom in digital public infrastructure and which excluded demographics need greater influence, power and freedoms moving forward. The paper calls for further research where power imbalances are investigated within specific contexts in order to build a future that protects agency and human rights.