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Short abstract

This paper analyses the infrastructuring involved in digital identification systems in a developing context like Togo in West Africa. This complex socio-technical system, which consists of open-source DPIs, state, and corporate actors, makes the citizen-resident legible by the state.

Long abstract

The identification of the citizens of a state has been a historical infrastructural act that materializes development agendas, the state-resident relationship, and questions of control and accountability (Szreter, 2007). Research has established an undeniable link between development and digital ID systems; inclusive, universal coverage can lead to a robust interface between citizens and other institutions including the government, public service providers, employers, and other commercial actors (Gelb, 2000; Gelb & Metz, 2018; White et al., 2019). Even so, Masiero and Bailur (2021) challenge this development rhetoric by highlighting the grave consequences of exclusionary digital ID systems that are, nonetheless, imagined to be a frictionless process of registration. Exclusion is compounded by existing social disadvantages; beyond issues of access to internet infrastructures, scholars have been concerned with datafied negative perception, and exclusion through design practices (Fernandes Da Silva Ranchordas, 2022; Park & Humphry, 2019).

In this paper, we take the case of the deployment of the identification Digital Public Infrastructure, Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) and its collaboration with Atos and IDEMIA, to identify the actor-infrastructure and how it intersects with the social realities of Togo. The Togolese government manages a historically challenged socio-economic context with different forms of inequalities. Our research question is: Which design choices (architecture & governance) structure the Togo e-ID and how do they impact the legibility of the citizen according to the state? Through a technographical approach, we position the e-ID infrastructure as a socio-technical system that constructs the neoliberal citizen through technical & architectural choices.