Paper short abstract:

Humanitarian efforts in Niger have increased their use of biosurveillance technologies to intercept migrants. Such “humanitarian technologies” reflect the expansion of technological solutionism via border management logics, and tether African futures to tech and security-based economic outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

Identified by the EU as a country of transit and a corridor of return, Niger has become critical to Europe’s migration control schemes and aspirations in the West Africa and North Africa regions. The EU has invested billions of euros into upgrading Niger’s border management capabilities with new technologies that track and intercept African migrants with more precision. Relatedly, humanitarian efforts in Niger have also increased their use of technologies to similarly surveil and intercept migrants. These “humanitarian technologies” reflect the expansion of technological solutionism via the carceral and capitalist logics of border management. Such technologies include drones, biometric sensors, and database software for tracking individuals. IOM deploys these carceral and military technologies to intercept and provision care for migrants as part of regional migration control. In resource-starved places across Africa, like Niger, the presence of all these expensive technologies for acquiring and managing migrants’ data exists alongside populations of peoples who have very little economic and political resources. It is unclear how those data collected from all these Africans are analyzed and what pictures they produce. What is clear however, is that those data produce economic possibilities and tech-based futures for tech corporations, defense contractors, and the booming migration management industry. As long as the humanitarian technologies remain successful and fully incorporated in migration management schemes, they represent incredible economic growth opportunities for their corporate stakeholders. Such profit possibilities under the guise of technological opportunism may orient African futures in specific directions, towards certain horizons.