La biométrie électorale au Tchad : controverses technopolitiques et imaginaires de la modernité

Abstract

Les technologies d’identification biométrique, de plus en plus utilisées lors des élections en Afrique, sont vendues comme un moyen de lutter contre la fraude. À partir du cas de l’enregistrement des électeurs au Tchad pour la présidentielle de 2016, l’article étudie comment s’est développé un imaginaire de la biométrie qui oppose la rationalité et la neutralité supposées de la technologie à la perversion de la politique. Il montre que, si la biométrie a été construite comme une nécessité et une « solution » pour résoudre la crise politique, elle a été repolitisée par des controverses sur le choix de la « bonne » technologie, ses utilisations et le rôle des acteurs internationaux, notamment des industriels français.

Dreaming biometrics in Niger: The security techniques of migration control in West Africa

“…By bypassing public authorities -the Ministry of Interior, decentralized departments and ECOWAS authorities -these organizations participate in the indirect and privatized governance of individuals. This dynamic of privatization has been observed with states outsourcing the management of biometric data for electoral purposes to multinational firms (Debos, 2018) or refugees' registration by the UNHCR, as illustrated above. But privatization in the production and access of data also serves to enable knowledge and monitoring of 'migration flows' at the border (identity of the traveller, nature, origins and frequency of the travel, etc.)…”

“…According to science and technology studies authors, studying biometric implementation urges us to escape from technological (and sociological) determinism (Ajana, 2013; Glouftsios and Scheel, 2021) and to consider it as a sociotechnical formation ‘to loop back and influence how we see the world’ (Jacobsen and Fast, 2019: 7; Jasanoff, 2004). Biometrics is embedded in the social and the political (Debos, 2018): ‘technology is not simply a passive means through which to achieve predefined ends’ (Jacobsen and Fast, 2019: 7). Technology participates in the international border regime that renders (il)legitimate travellers crossing borders as illegal while failing to count and identify thousands of deaths at borderlands or at sea, given unequal access to visibility to the border regime and state violence (Tazzioli and Walters, 2016; Weizman, 2017).…”

The Sustainable Development Goals and ‘legal identity for all’: ‘First, do no harm’

“…While savings have clearly been made in some contexts, the new identification systems have greatly increased up-front costs, for uncertain long-term benefits. In the more-studied field of electoral registration, the cost of elections has dramatically escalated in those countries that have invested in a biometric voters' roll (Cheeseman et al, 2018;Debos, 2018;van der Straaten, 2019), although it is argued that in the right conditions the expected gain could exceed the cost (Gelb & Diofasi, 2016). There are also registration systems where the entire project has been abandoned: an early effort to create a digital national identity card in Nigeria left the data of sixty million Nigerians in the hands of the French company Sagem, for no national benefit (Manby, 2018a, p. 255).…”