ADRN publishes guide to digital rights:
14th March 2025
ADRN has published a new guide to digital rights.
When our Ford Foundation project brought together workers' rights, disability rights, and digital rights actors, we found that digital rights terms were often not used or understood in other organisations. So we produced a handy introductory guide called "Understanding Digital Rights" as a clear and accessible guide for those new to digital rights - or for anyone wanting to expand their knowledge and learn about key digital rights organisations and available resources.
In the guide we explain digital rights as understood in three different ways:
1. As a set of entitlements provided in human rights law
2. As a framework for analysing technology and projects
3. As a form of activism to tackle right-violations and injustice
Click here to download the guide which is free and open access.
Call for expressions of interest
10th March 2025
New research project:
Safe City Public Space Surveillance in Africa: rights, interests and justice
This project will map current developments in the roll-out of surveillance of public space across Africa as part of so-called Safe City or Smart City programmes.
The first phase of the research will document the current state-of-play by detailing the dimensions, features, and effects of public space surveillance in ten Africa countries. For this phase we will commission country reports and publish an online report on public space surveillance in Africa. The research will document when the smart city and Chinese ‘safe city’ projects started, the size of the contracts, the lead Ministries and agencies, the private companies involved, the technologies procured, the location and volumes of systems, the impacts to-date and the hopes and concerns of citizens, civil society and governments. The phase one report will provide the most detailed and comprehensive documentation of public space surveillance in Africa to-date.
The second phase of the research will build on the work of phase one studies by producing a collected edition book featuring in-depth critical analysis by ten African scholars. Each chapter will analyse the data and evidence documented in the first phase through the analytic lens of digital rights, infrastructural justice and power interests. The in-depth case studies published in the book will provide the most detailed analysis of the drivers, dynamics and directions of smart city and safe city surveillance in Africa to date.
The book will be edited by Dr. Wairagala Wakabi and Dr. Tony Roberts and will be the seventh title in the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN) series of 'Digital Africa' books published by Bloomsbury. Please review the previous ADRN online reports and collected edition book on the ADRN website to clarify the two kinds of outputs that we will produce in this project.
Call for abstracts:
We invite expressions of interest from researchers interested in contributing to this project in the form of 300-word expressions of interest stating the proposed country, key issues, and distinguishing factors of public space surveillance in your country. The deadline for submissions is Monday 31st March 2025. Please note that although we will initiate discussion with potential authors in April 2025 to help us refine the research design and book proposal, it is not expected that writing will begin in earnest until June 2025.
Please include with your 300-word expression of interest, a one-page CV that provides links to any of your own previous publications in this area. We welcome submissions from activists and practitioners and from both emerging and established scholars. We are keen to include case studies from activists and researchers writing about countries that are under-represented in the anglophone literature.
Please submit your expression of interest to t.roberts@ids.ac.uk and wakabi@cipesa.org by email - in a Word document – and please include
“Safe Cities Africa" in the subject line.
Digital Surveillance in Africa: Power, Agency and Rights
18 February 2025
The third book in the Digital Africa Series 'Digital Surveillance in Africa' will be published on March 20th 2025.
You can read and freely download the introductory chapter here.
The paperback book is available to pre-order from the publisher Zed Books/Bloomsbury or from your usual bookseller.
The book provides the most comprehensive documentation to date of digital surveillance in each country as well as the most sustained analysis of the socio-cultural, political, and economic drivers and forms of resistance to rights-violating surveillance across the continent. Ten African scholars provide in-depth case study analysis from eight African countries.
To provide context, each chapter begins with a brief history of pre-digital surveillance systems under colonial and post-liberation governments. Authors then provide empirical studies of five types of surveillance technology: mobile interception, internet interception, social media monitoring, biometric digital-ID and public space surveillance using facial recognition. Analysis is provided of how the use of rights-violating digital surveillance affects (dis)advantage and serves specific power interests. Each chapter concludes with concrete policy recommendations at local, national, and international levels.
You can read more and pre-order a hard copy of the book by following this link
New research project began Jan 2025:
Biometric Digital-ID in Africa: identity, power and interests
14th January 2025
The first phase of this new project will provide the most comprehensive mapping to date of developments in Digital-ID across the continent. In the second half of the year, phase two of the project will analyse the drivers and dynamics of digital-ID to uncover the impact on identities, power and interests. As governments roll-out biometric identity systems and link them to citizens' banking and mobile phone accounts we study whether they become a precondition of access to rights, services & entitlements.
The first phase of the research will produce an online report that documents the dimensions, and detailed specifications of Digital-ID in ten Africa countries including examples from all of the continent's main regions and language groups. The second phase of the research will produce a collected edition book with space for in-depth analysis of who benefits and what interests are served by biometric digital-ID across Africa.
This research is being co-edited by 'Gbenga Sesan of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria.
The Digitalisation of Social Protection in Africa: The Perspective of Marginalised Workers
3rd September 2024
New research report published
ADRN has partnering with an impressive array of marginalised workers' organisations to support their unique research into the digalisation of social protection.
What is social protection?
This is the first study of digital social protection from the perspective of informal marginalised workers in Africa. ADRN worked with domestic workers' leaders to conduct interviews with domestic workers and home-based workers to conduct focus groups with home-based workers. This participatory action research worked to foster trust among participants and means that knowledge is not extracted but instead built within workers' organisations to directly inform their on-going work.
Six studies were carried out with domestic workers, disabled workers, migrant workers, and home-based workers in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. This research report synthesises their findings and recommendations to establish a clear agenda for change.
Project partners include WIEGO informal workers, the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWFED), HomeNet Kenya (home-based workers), StreetNet International (street workers), JONAPWD (disabled workers), ATUMNET (migrant workers) and the African Platform for Social Protection. These organisations engaged over 700 workers in interviews or focuse groups, in six African countries.
They found that although the right to decent work and social protection is guaranteed to all citizens in international human rights law, the most marginalised workers are often left behind when social protection systems are digitalised.
Formal sector workers pay into social insurance schemes automatically from every paycheck and receive social protection payments if they are sick, unemployed or retire. Informal workers often lack regular employers and paycheck and experience intermitant and low income. They often earn too little to be able to join contributory social insurance funds but too much to qualify for non-contributory payments to the poorest.
The digitalisation of social protection promised to increase the convenience and efficiency of accessing social protection entitlements (and it does for those with smartphones, connectivity, and digital literacy), but our research shows that millions of informal workers are being further excluded by the digitalisation of social protection because they cannot access and navigate the online systems.
ADRN attends #FIFAfrica Senegal
digital rights conference
18 September 2024
ADRN delegation attends #FIFAfrica2024
Digital Social Protection report launch
A delegation of African workers will attend FIFAfrica in Dakar and will officially launch our report on Digital Social Protection on Friday 27th September 2024.
The research is the first to analyse the digitalisation of social protection from the persective of marginalised workers, including domestic workers, home-based workers, disabled workers and migrant workers. Partner organisations conducted interviews and focus groups with over 700 workers in six African countries.
ADRN will also use the occaision of FIFAfrica to announce new projects on digital authoritarianism planned for 2025 and 2026.
Closed
Digital-ID in Africa
call for expressions of interest
24th April 2024
New research project:
Digital-ID in Africa: identity, power and interests
This project will map current developments in Digital-ID across the continent as biometric identity systems, linked to citizens' banking and mobile phone accounts, are rolled out and become a precondition of access to services & entitlements.
The first phase of the research will be a report that documents the drivers, dimensions, dynamics and directions of Digital-ID in ten Africa countries including examples from all of the continent's main regions and language groups. The research will document the impact of new identification and verification technologies on citizens' digital rights.
The second phase of the research will build on the work of phase one studies by producing a collected edition book featuring in-depth critical analysis by ten African scholars on the Digital-ID systems emerging in ten Africa countries, and will provide ten in-depth case studies to expand knowledge and theory in this space.
The book will be edited by 'Gbenga Sesan and Dr. Tony Roberts and will be the sixth title in the ADRN series of 'Digital Africa' books published by Zed Books.
Call for abstracts:
We invite expressions of interest from researchers interested in contributing to the project in the form of 300 word abstracts stating the proposed country, issue, and conceptual focus. The deadline for submissions is 14th June 2024. Please note that although we will initiate discussion with potential authors in July 2024 to help us refine the research design and book proposal, it is not expected that writing will begin in earnest until January 2025.
Please include with your expression of interest, a short CV, that includes links to your previous publications in this area. We welcome submissions from activists and practitioners and from emerging and established scholars. We are keen to include case studies from activists and researchers writing about countries that are under-represented in the anglophone literature.
Possible topics for the volume include, but are not limited to:
- The role of digital-ID in expanding legal identity and access to rights and entitlements
- Digital-ID and digital government services
- The role of the prviate sector in biometrics and digital-ID
- Power analysis of the range of interests driving digital-ID
- Participatory / ethographic research with citizens' included or excluded by biometric Digital-ID
- Intersectional analysis of 'who benefits'?
- How to expand citizen influence in Digital-ID agendas in ways that expand rights, freeoms and entitlements
Please submit your expression of interest to t.roberts@ids.ac.uk by email in Word format including “Digital-ID in Africa" in the subject line.
ADRN attended #DRIF24
Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum
in Accra from April 23-25th
25th March 2024
DRIF24 is one of the largest pan-African digital rights fora bringing together activists, civil society organisations, academia, tech companies & govt. It is organised and hosted annually by ADRN's, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria,
This year DRIF24 is being held in Accra from 23rd- to 25th April at the Alisa Hotel with the theme 'Fostering Rights and Inclusion in the Digital Age'.
Many ADRN members attended #DRIF24 and we organised three events:
- Panel presenting ADRN research on Workers' Perspectives on the Digitalisation of Social Protection
- Book Launch: "Digital Disinformation in Africa: hashtag politics, power, and propaganda" plus new book announcement
- ADRN Annual General Meeting: a hybrid event in person in Accra and online at 14:00 on the 24th
Closed
Call for Chapter Abstracts extended to 31st August 2023
25th July 2023
New book: Feminist Digital Citizenship in Africa
Feminist Digital Citizenship in Africa: transformative online feminism. Edited by Dr. Tanja Bosch and Dr. Tony Roberts.
A collected edition for Zed Books for publication in 2024.
Call for abstracts:
We invite abstract submissions for chapters to be included in a collected edition book on digital feminist citizenship in Africa towards a book proposal for submission to Zed Books.
In recent years, we have seen a renewal in feminist politics “that emerge from the interface of digital platforms and activism today” (Baer, 2016). Women increasingly use participatory digital media to network and organize in various ways, including against sexism and rape culture (Mendes et al., 2019). Digital feminist protest culture has facilitated the emergence of digital feminist citizenship, whereby women use digital technologies to claim their rights as citizens and challenge structures that limit their participation in the public sphere.
Feminists have, however argued that the discourses and practices of citizenship “are deeply gendered and racialized”; as well as “deeply ambiguous and exclusionary” (Ackelsberg, 2009, 119-120), as it has generally been accepted that citizenship occurs in the public domain, thus excluding private or domestic activities and those located in those areas, e.g., women. Moreover, feminist scholars have highlighted the failure of citizenship rights vested in liberal democracies to meet the needs of women and other minority groups, including those who are socially or economically marginalised (Lister, 1997).
We invited you to submit a 200-word abstract by 31st August 2023. Please include a short CV, including a bibliography, along with your submission. We welcome submissions from activists and practitioners as well as emerging and established scholars.
We encourage case studies located in various parts of the continent, empirical work, as well as theoretical reflections, which contribute toward an exploration of contemporary feminist protest and digital feminisms.
Possible topics for the volume include, but are not limited to:
- The role of digital technologies in shaping feminist citizenship in Africa
- Algorithmic culture and online identity
- Case studies of digital feminist campaigns/online activism
- Other manifestations of digital feminist citizenship
- The interplay between offline and online feminist citizenship practices
- Transformational feminist digital citizenship
Sbmit your abstract to Tanja.Bosch@uct.ac.za and T.Roberts@ids.ac.uk with “Digital Feminist Citizenship” in the subject line. If our proposal is accepted, we will ask for an extended abstract of 1500 words by mid-September and a first draft of 2500-3000 words by the end of November. Full final papers of 6,000 – 7,000 words will be due in Jan-Feb 2024.
This volume is expected to make an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on digital citizenship and digital activism in Africa, and we look forward to receiving your submissions.citizens
Funders
the African Digital Rights Network gratefully acknowledges financial support from
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