Paper short abstract:

In digital identification technologies, the digital citizen appears to be less a bearer of rights than a cosmopolitan, tech-savvy subject who secures the political stability of the country by participating in and shaping the digital economy.

Paper long abstract:

Many African governments have begun implementing digital identification programs that should help register the ‘missing billion’ to fulfil the Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 ‘legal identity for all’. These technologies come in the form of biometric National Identification Numbers, digital ID cards and digital identity wallets. Building on recent research on ‘digital citizens’ (Isin/Ruppert 2020) and the ‘start-up state’ (Nair 2019), this presentation examines how sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff 2020) linked to digital identification technologies reconfigure imaginaries of the state and its citizens (Stepputat/Hansen 2001). By discussing preliminary results of my ongoing ethnographic field research on the digital ID in Sierra Leone, I suggest that the digital citizen appears to be less a bearer of rights than a cosmopolitan, tech-savvy subject who secures the political stability of the country by participating in and shaping the digital economy.