Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the adoption of new technologies in different parts of the election process across Africa, the challenges this creates for protecting election integrity, and the ways in which election observers have responded to these challenges.

Paper long abstract:

Elections increasingly involve technology at various stages of the electoral cycle. This ranges from biometric voter registration in advance of the election, to biometric identification on election day, e-voting, digital vote tallying and electronic transmission of results. These new technologies create a number of challenges, both for the election observation missions deployed by international organizations, as well as for the civil society groups that operate as domestic observers or 'election watchdogs.' The uptake of new electoral technologies varies between countries and between different parts of the election process. Many African countries have been early adopters of biometric voter registration. A smaller number of African countries have taken steps towards introducing electronic voting machines. This paper will examine the technological transformation of African elections and election observation in comparative perspective. It will map out: (i) the extent to which countries in Africa have adopted new technologies in different parts of the election process; (ii) the challenges this creates for protecting election integrity; and, (iii) the ways in which international and domestic observers have responded to these challenges. The paper will draw on case studies from Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as examples from beyond the region that allow African elections to be analysed in comparative perspective. While this will expose weaknesses in the current practice of election observers, it will also highlight instances in which observers - domestic and international - have adopted innovative new tactics to protect the integrity of elections.

Paper short abstract:

Electoral rigging in Africa is widespread leading to violence and political instability. Nonetheless, countries are adopting digital technology in ensuring free and fair elections. Using Kenya as a case, the paper argues that ruling regimes often manipulate technology to aiding fraud.

Paper long abstract:

Electoral rigging, either perceived or actual, is endemic in Africa. Empirical evidence shows that instances of electoral rigging are widespread leading to violence and political instability. As an attempt to curb rigging, African countries are increasingly adopting the use of digital technology in managing elections. It is often argued that the introduction of biometric voter registration and biometric voter identification on an election day increases accuracy and integrity of the ballot hence free and fair election. Contrary to this expectation, ruling regimes in Africa have often manipulated technology to aiding fraud and rigging. With technology, regimes, unlike in the past where they used blatant and crude strategies in rigging elections, in recent times the process is made 'scientifically' and sometimes disregarded by election observers. Using the two landmark Kenya's Supreme Court cases of 2013 and 2017, the paper holds that the failure of technology in curbing electoral rigging is largely premeditated.

Paper short abstract:

Cette contribution pose la question de la citoyenneté et de l'engagement politique des jeunes Africains à travers les réseaux sociaux face à la gouvernance de leurs dirigeants dans un contexte de mutations sociopolitiques et de transition démocratique.

Paper long abstract:

Depuis quelques années, Facebook impulse, par les actions des jeunes, des transformations politiques, nécessaire à l'amorce d'un passage vers la démocratie. Arène de débat et de discussion dont le contrôle échappe aux pouvoirs politiques, ce médium est devenu, non seulement, un espace de sociabilité donnant à la jeunesse Ivoirienne la primauté à la discussion politique, aux contestations, résistances et révoltes face à la gouvernance avec une plus grande liberté, mais aussi un espace de défense des causes des dirigeants.

Le développement de cette mobilisation collective via Facebook a-t-il un effet ou impact sur la gouvernance des dirigeants ?

Cette étude longitudinale s'est déroulée de Juin 2014 à Octobre 2018 en Côte d'Ivoire, pays dans un contexte de mutations sociopolitiques et de transition démocratique.

Selon une approche socio-anthropologique de la communication, nous examinerons, tout d'abord, les modes d'occupation de l'espace et ses dimensions délibératives au regard de la gouvernance ; nous montrerons ensuite comment les jeunes Ouest-Africains ont investi ce médium pour s'impliquer, s'informer et dénoncer ce qu'ils considèrent comme la mauvaise gouvernance ou comment les engagements coexistent avec les productions et le partage d'informations dans les pays concernés. Enfin, notre analyse mettra l'accent sur les effets de la mobilisation collective avec en toile de fond les permanences et les transformations opérés dans le pays.

La collecte de données se fonde sur deux méthodes principales : l'observation ethnographique en ligne (vidéo, photos, post écrit, like, partage) et l'enquête par entretien de 310 internautes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore emergent Kenya's disruptive expressive online digital cultures and the various information regimes of (dis)order emerging both from the margins and the centre as the public and the government engage in the making of a new political culture.

Paper long abstract:

As digital media becomes ubiquitous in Kenya, forms of communication enabling the creation of new individual and collective political subjectivities are emerging. Accordingly, digital media is assuming significant cultural and political agency as users fabricate new ways to express and organise themselves. In much of Africa, the production and circulation of information has always been attended by various economies of control, often part of a much broader strategy by governments to 'husband power' ('infopolitics'). The intention in part is to normalise particular 'ideologies of order'. The disruption of these orders and of state-sanctioned narratives, and the creation of new (dis)orders is therefore significant. This new information regime presents multiple opportunities for the growth of a new aesthetics of political practice, one that is disruptive and potentially transformative. Yet it similarly enables, even encourages new forms of state control as the arena of social and political negotiation extends online. This paper seeks to explore emergent Kenya's disruptive expressive online digital cultures and the various information regimes of (dis)order emerging both from the margins and the centre as the public and the state engage in the making of a new political culture.

Paper short abstract:

Governments facilitated markets offering telecommunications and Internet access with surprising enthusiasm, partly because they were offered technologies for interception, surveillance and network shutdowns, supporting and extending conventional (secret) policing from benign to brutally repressive.

Paper long abstract:

Liberalisation of markets and access to global technologies has helped drive the massive expansion of telecommunications, the Internet and social networks in Africa, creating new spaces to be policed. Enthusiasm for liberalisation is partly explained by the technology being bundled with a wide and increasingly sophisticated array of facilities for interception, wiretapping and shutdowns. This has allowed almost any level of surveillance from the minimal to the Orwellian. Consequently, governments have been able to extend their established practices of law and order into telecommunications, Internet access and social networks, for example, filtering keywords, blocking temporarily or permanently individual websites and services, and identifying individuals for questioning and enhanced interrogation. It is possible to monitor citizens at least as effectively as in the physical world and often less obtrusively. Much of the surveillance activity has been undertaken by intelligence services, which have access to the necessary budgets, and operate outside the, generally, limited checks and balances of constitutional courts and parliaments. In practice very few are required to observe human rights. There are almost no effective restraints on the adoption of sophisticated surveillance technologies, other than the limited availability of skills. Constitutional rights to privacy and dignity are systematically ignored, as are complaints about shutdowns.