Digital Surveillance in Africa - (Digital Africa) by Tony Roberts & Admire Mare (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Media coverage and scholarly research on digital surveillance has focused primarily on the USA and Europe. Everyone knows about Cambridge Analytica's social media surveillance; Edward Snowden's revelations of the West's mass internet and phone surveillance; and Pegasus Spyware's mobile phone surveillance of activists, journalists, judges, and presidents across the world. Comparatively little is known about the millions of dollars now being spent on digital technologies for use in the illegal and illegitimate surveillance of citizens in Africa.

In this open-access third volume of Bloomsbury's Digital Africa series, a broad range of African and European scholars and practitioners map the development, procurement and (mis)use of the ever-expanding suite of digital surveillance and policing technologies across the continent. Drawing on the empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated research of the African Digital Rights Network, this book examines how public and private actors in Africa use spyware, mobile phone extraction, biometric and face recognition systems, and other technologies for smart-city and other social, and social-control, applications. Eight chapters examine eight African countries, and each of these begins with a thorough political history of the nature of surveillance there under colonial and post-liberation political settlements. This enables new analyses of the socio-cultural, political, and economic drivers and characteristics of contemporary digital surveillance in each country, all of which ultimately leads to concrete policy recommendations at local, national, and international levels.

For its empirical richness and breadth, as well as its theoretical sophistication, Digital Surveillance in Africa is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary African studies, and it is of keen interest to anyone concerned with how digital surveillance affects everyday lives across the world.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Civic Futures.

Review Quotes

"Africa has become one of the world's fastest growing international markets for surveillance technology, and its governments some of the biggest users of surveillance against their own peoples. At the same time, African research and activism around surveillance and digital rights issues are flourishing and producing some of the most hard-hitting critiques and responses. Digital Surveillance in Africa is a vibrant, interdisciplinary volume that directs our focus away from the areas where surveillance studies has long been concerned, towards a continent struggling to escape long legacies of colonialism and the current machinations of both global capital and imperial interference, and forging its own future." --David Murakami Wood, University of Ottawa, Canada

""Digital Surveillance in Africa" unveils the intricate dynamics of panoptic real-time surveillance and the chilling effect that constrains civic space across the continent. Through case studies on Sisi's Egypt and Kenyan ID systems, this collection exposes how surveillance technologies exacerbate power asymmetries. By exposing rights-violating surveillance, the authors in this collection challenge us to envision and hope for a future where privacy and freedom are actively maintained.

From phishing, spyware, and smart cities, to the troubling proliferation of biometric digital-ID systems, "Digital Surveillance in Africa" offers a deep examination of the continent's multi-billion-dollar surveillance market. Contributors explore how such technologies impact fundamental rights, highlighting both the pall of repression and the opportunities for resistance, this book provides actionable insights to balance surveillance with democratic values.

"Digital Surveillance in Africa" explores how the hidden power of state and corporate actors intersects with "created spaces" of citizen resistance. Anchored in an analysis of surveillance technologies-such as AI-powered facial recognition and social media monitoring-the book navigates the tension between growing authoritarianism and the active demand for civic agency." --Philip Howard, University of Oxford, UK

"In an era marked by aggressive, ubiquitous bouts of digital authoritarianism and transnational repression, this book is going to certainly be a must-have for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers interested in the unfolding nature of digital surveillance in Africa. Applicable to other regions of the world, carefully-selected cases distinguished by well-reasoned, first-rate analysis and critique, ranging from Kenya to Zambia, Egypt to Nigeria, address critical issues on the appropriation of digital technology to coerce and control citizens across Africa." --Bruce Mutsvairo, Utrecht University, Netherlands

"From colonial spy-systems to contemporary analyses of the 'digital state' and 'safe-and-smart-cities, ' this book explores surveillance across six African countries. Often reliant on technology from China or Israel, new kinds of dependency emerge, along with fresh modes of resistance. Some salutary conclusions are reached, for those in both global south and global north." --David Lyon, Queen's University, Canada

About the Author

Tony Roberts is a Digital Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. His research focuses on digital rights, digital inequalities and participatory methodologies. He has worked at the intersection of digital technologies, development and social justice since 1988. Dr. Roberts is the principal investigator of the GCRF African Digital Rights Network and editor of the collected edition Digital Rights in Closing Civic Space: Lessons from Ten African Countries.

Admire Mare is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He was previously Deputy Head of the Communications department at the Namibian University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on participatory journalism, social media misinformation, and digital surveillance.