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Short abstract:

Far from being just a political ideal of public consultation, Democracy is an infrastructure that travels and transforms through history. In the 1960s, Democracy «going South» lead to the invention of civil biometrics : the birth of a system of remote surveillance of Africa's new citizens.

Long abstract:

It is a shared knowledge, by ordinary people, academics, and journalists that the use of biometrics to register voters in Africa (the subject of my doctoral dissertation) is something ontologically contrary to the ethics of normal democracy. It seems that biometrics is a surveillance technology that has nothing to share with empowerment, voting and democracy. In this presentation, I illustrate the emergence and globalization of biometric technologies as the result of the globalization of democracy in the 1960s. In this decade, African countries achieve independence from colonial powers, begin to establish the infrastructure of the modern state, self-govern themselves through the medium of universal suffrage. The arrival of democracy in Africa also determines the entry of African peoples into the global citizenship regime. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic observations, and institutional literature, I illustrate first, some elements that suggest that the Africanization of democracy was the driving force behind the rise and reinvention of biometrics as a tool for managing the identities of civilian citizens (and not just criminals as was the case up to that time). Second, I illustrate the rise of the biometrics industry as a tool for managing two sets of tasks related to sovereignty: democracy in Africa (voting and the management of identification documents) and the control of European borders, thus the management of the circulations of African populations. The presentation contributes to reframing democracy as an industrial power structure that induces the production of the technologies of otherness.