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AAP - The East African Review - Special Issue - DL : 27 April 2026

The East African Review - Special Issue - Call for papers “Governing Political Change through the Digital. For an ethnohistorical perspective on voting technologies and biometrics in the Great Easter Region”.

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PASSANTI Cecilia
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The East African Review

Since 1996, The East African Review has been publishing articles in English and French. The studies published fall within various disciplinary fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences, notably Sociology, Geography, History, Anthropology, Urbanism and Political Science. The East African Review covers several countries in the Greater East Africa region, i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Eastern Congo-DRC, Tanzania and Burundi. It is entirely in open access with the aim of making research available to the largest audience possible, and publishes two issues per year.

Special Issue – Call for Papers
Deadline : April 27, 2026

Governing Political Change through the Digital For an ethnohistorical perspective on voting technologies and biometrics in the Great Easter Region

Abstract

Digital technologies and IT experts have become central actors in African elections. Electoral institutions rely on expanding infrastructures—databases, biometric systems, software platforms, and result-transmission tools—to administer the vote. Unlike U.S. voting machines, African systems are marked by normalized integration of biometrics technologies, historically associated with policing and migration control. Fingerprints, facial and iris recognition now structure voter registration, accreditation, and identification, transforming both electoral procedures and the actors who arbitrate electoral legitimacy. Technical personnel, IT experts, and private companies increasingly shape the “truth” of elections, assuming political roles that remain understudied despite their influence on country stability, policies and popular insurrection.

This Special issue investigates the historical, political, and technocratic trajectories of voting technologies in the Greater Eastern Region (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Eastern Congo-DRC, Tanzania and Burundi). By mobilising Africanist political sociology, STS, the social history of elections, development/democracy aid studies, and the anthropology of expertise, it examines how digital infrastructures govern publics, redistribute responsibility for electoral and political malpractice, articulate continuities with colonial forms of remote control, statecraft, and international influence. Through comparative, ethnographic and historical approaches, the issue aims to establish a research field dedicated to voting technologies and biometrics as key lenses for analysing the relation between political change and digital governance.

Argument

Digital technologies are playing an increasingly important role in African elections. The electoral institutions of all countries are engaged in the development of complex systems and digital infrastructures for managing voting[1]. These technologies consist of a heterogeneous ecosystem of instruments, databases, work and management models comprising voting machines and printers, digital applications and user interfaces intended for polling station staff, candidates, and voters, and systems for managing and publishing election results.

Differing from U.S. voting machines - who are object of several studies (Ihl 2003) - African electoral technologies are characterized by the integration of a technology more often known for the management of criminals (Piazza 2014) and migrants (Amelung, Granja et Machado 2021). Electoral rolls, voter cards, and, in some cases, the authentication of voters upon entering the polling station, rely on automated collection and analysis of biometric data — fingerprints, facial recognition, and iris recognition.

This family of objects increasingly fuels controversies over vote legitimacy, which brings on the electoral scene (Bennani-Chraïbi 2005), actors that do not have the vocation for it : technical staff, IT experts but also CEOs, innovators and industrial figures, elevate to “political figures” (Diop et Diouf 2000 ; Bazenguissa-Ganga 2022) intervening in support or challenging the “electoral truth”[2]. While playing a dramatic role in the political life of African continent, now for half a century, voting technologies and their actors, lack comprehensive studies. These studies are especially lacking from East Africa, and from a comparative and regional perspective, which would help framing this reality as a form of transnational governance (Deforge 2019).

State of the art

Inscribed within the materialist turn in Africanist sociology of voting (Perrot, Pommerolle et Willis 2016) and of citizenship (Awenengo Dalberto et Banégas 2021), studies on biometric voting in Africa have shown that far to be neutral infrastructures, technoscience in can exacerbate political conflicts revolving around the vote (Obame 2021). Overlapping with the stakes of indirect private governance (Mbembe 1999), they increase the costs of elections (Okwueze 2022), organising the exercice around concepts and notions driven by the IT field of knowledge (Passanti et Pommerolle 2022)and eroding electorate access to the vote (2024 ; Diagana 2025).While vehiculating liberal forms of democracy and development assistance (Jacobsen 2020), they revive longstanding suspicions toward state rulers (Hobbis et Hobbis 2017).

Within this literature, studies have rarely engaged with a) the historical dimension of computers and computer industries in voting (Nkoyock 2004), that dates back to the making of the independent state in the 1960s (Passanti 2025) ; b) the continuity of voting technology with models of remote governance (Baldacchino, Greenwood et Felt 2009) elaborated and exerted in the colonial era ; b) digital devices as traveling model of public and state governance (Olivier de Sardan 2025) ; c) digital devices from STS perspective on users, publics and deviancy in elections : how they distribute responsibility for the vote, for electoral malpractices, and change in politics and governance (Zambo Belinga 2007 ; Akrich 1997) ; d) digital infrastructures role in governing political change, providing tools to established governments and IR to reinforce their power though knowledge and maintain their legitimacy (Rader et Périer 2016).

Actualising African research institutions’ engagement on digital technologies in election management (Ibeanu 2022 ; Nwokeafor 2017), and pursuing this body of literature, this Special issue wish to collect contributions on technology development in the Grate Easter Region. Many of the countries of the region are defined by practitioners and by the scientific literature as leaders in their development : Democratic Republic of Congo is often defined as the place of origins of the move towards the biometric in voter identification ; Kenya is an old actor in digitizing its political life, and election controversies are deeply shaped by these infrastructures (Omwoha 2022 ; Amoah 2019). Less is known on Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, which, however, have been developing voting machines and biometric technologies to identifies voters and citizens at least since the 2000. By bringing together comparative, critical, and historical studies of voting technologies and biometric infrastructures in electoral administration, this special issue aims to understand the trajectories of technocratic development and deployment across the region, and to link them to political power, stability, and political change, as well as to the privatization and externalization of state apparatuses.

Merging African political sociology and historical sociology of the vote, history of science and technology and science and technology studies (STS), socio-anthropology of expertise and the state at work, this special issue argues for the necessity of building an interdisciplinary field of research field on politics focusing on digital infrastructures of the vote. The objective of the Special issue is to make this family of objects, practices and actors a privileged field for the study of political reforms, international relations and a heuristic entrance for understanding political change and its absence (Lemoine 2022).

The number aims invite contributions on topics as :

  • Comparative studies of voting technologies
  • The social history of voting technologies since the 1960s
  • Studies of international relations (IR) of the production of voting technologies
  • Development and democracy aid role in technology production and funding
  • Studies on economies, markets and digital labour logics within voting administrations
  • Electoral controversies with and around voting technologies, experts and their IR
  • Dependency, foreign funding and foreign managed digital infrastructures and their relations with the in/stability of the ruling class, presidential figures and the political order more widely understood, both in the present and historical perspective.
  • Digital models of governance of the vote, the electorate and the publics
  • Continuity and rupture between digital governance of the vote and colonial governance

The Special Issue contributes to the social studies of science and technology and not to technical contributions/evaluations. Kindly check the editorial policy and guidelines to authors.

Editorial policy and Guidelines for authors available here :
https://journals.openedition.org/ea...

Send your article to the editor emails in French or English by April 27, 2026.
Do not hesitate to get in contact for further questions on content and expectations. Texts may not exceed 10,000 words, including bibliography and summaries.

Important dates :

  • 27 April 2026 : Reception of the articles
  • 27 Juin 2026 : Reception of the peer-review feedback
  • 27 September 2026 : Reception of article V2
  • December 2026 : Publication of the Special Issue in The East African Review 62

References

  • Akrich Madeleine, 1997, « The De-Scription of Technical Objects » dans Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, MIT Press.
  • Amelung Nina, Granja Rafaela et Machado Helena, 2021, « A Brief History of the Evolution of Biometrics and Biometric Database Systems Crossing Borders in EU Law Enforcement » dans Modes of bio-bordering : the hidden (dis)integration of Europe, Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 15‑34.
  • Amoah Michael, 2019, « Sleight is right : Cyber control as a new battleground for African elections », African Affairs, 2019, vol. 119, no 474, p. 68‑89.
  • Awenengo Dalberto Séverine et Banégas Richard, 2021, Identification and citizenship in Africa : biometrics, the documentary state and bureaucratic writings of the self, London, Routledge.
  • Baldacchino Godfrey, Greenwood Rob et Felt Lawrence, 2009, Remote Control : Governance Lessons for and from Small, Insular, and Remote Regions, St. John’s, Nfld, ISER Books, 328 p.
  • Bazenguissa-Ganga Rémy, 2022, « Moïse le technicien et Josué le résistant  : figures électorales des utopies au Congo-Brazzaville » dans Utopies et dystopies dans l’imaginaire politique, Paris, L’Harmattan.
  • Bennani-Chraïbi Mounia, 2005, Scènes et coulisses de l’élection au Maroc : les législatives 2002, Paris, Karthala.
  • Debos Marielle, 2025, « A Postcolonial Card Cartel : How European Companies Sold Biometric Voting in Africa », Development and Change, 2025, vol. 0, no 0, p. 1‑27.
  • Deforge Quentin, 2019, La fabrique transnationale du politique  : Une sociologie historique du champ réformateur de la « gouvernance » (1961-2019), Doctoral thesis in social sciences, Université Paris Dauphine, Paris.
  • Diagana Boubacar, 2025, La biométrie dans l’identification civile en Afrique  : Mauritanie et Côte d’Ivoire  : Sociologie politique de l’identité nationale et de l’effacement de la Citoyenneté à l’ère des systèmes biométriques de l’identification,Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris.
  • Diop Momar-Coumba et Diouf Mamadou, 2000, Les Figures du politique en Afrique  : Des pouvoirs hérités aux pouvoirs élus, Paris, Dakar, Karthala.
  • Eyenga Georges Macaire, 2024, « La fabrique de l’électorat. Pour une praxiographie de la participation politique au Cameroun », Participations, 2024, vol. 40, no 3, p. 195‑222.
  • Hobbis Stephanie Ketterer et Hobbis Geoffrey, 2017, « Voter Integrity, Trust and the Promise of Digital Technologies : Biometric Voter Registration in Solomon Islands », Anthropological Forum, 2017, vol. 27, no 2, p. 114‑134.
  • Ibeanu Okechukwu, 2022, « Digital Technologies and Election Management in Africa’s Democratisation Process : More Technocratic than Democratic ? », Africa Development, 2022, vol. 47.
  • Ihl Olivier, 2003, « Un battement d’aile de papillon. Sur les usages des dispositifs de vote aux Etats-Unis » dans La politisation, Paris., Belin, p. 279‑299.
  • Jacobsen Katja, 2020, « Biometric voter registration : A new modality of democracy assistance ? », Cooperation and Conflict, 2020, vol. 55, no 1, p. 127‑148.
  • Lemoine Benjamin, 2022, La démocratie disciplinée par la dette, Paris, La Découverte.
  • Mbembe Achille, 1999, « Du gouvernement privé indirect », Politique africaine, 1999, vol. 73, no 1, p. 103‑121.
  • Nkoyock Alain, 2004, Problématique de l’informatisation des processus électoraux, Paris, L’Harmattan.
  • Nwokeafor Cosmas U., 2017, Technology integration and transformation of elections in Africa : an evolving modality, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Obame Yves Valéry, 2021, Gouverner par la biométrie. Dynamiques d’institutionnalisation d’une réforme technopolitique dans la compétition électorale au Cameroun, Thèse de doctorat en sociologie, Université de Yaoundé 1, Yaoundé.
  • Okwueze Felicia Osondu, 2022, « Interrogating the Cost of Digital Technology and Trust in Elections in Africa : The Nigerian Perspective », Africa Development, 2022, vol. 47, no 2, p. 199‑217.
  • Olivier de Sardan Jean-Pierre, 2025, Traveling Models and Practical Norms : The Misadventures of Social Engineering in Africa and Beyond, New York, Berghahn Books.
  • Omwoha Joyce, 2022, « ‘Open the Servers’ : The Implications of Electoral Technology for Kenya’s Democratisation Process », Africa Development, 2022, vol. 47, no 2, p. 147‑160.
  • Passanti Cecilia, 2025, Les infrastructures numériques du vote en Afrique. Biométrie, machines à voter et marchands de démocratie au Kenya et au Sénégal, Thèse de doctorat en sciences, techniques, sociétés, Université Paris Cité, Paris.
  • Passanti Cecilia et Pommerolle Marie-Emmanuelle, 2022, « The (un)making of electoral transparency through technology : the 2017 Kenyan presidential controversy », Social Studies of Science, 2022, vol. 52, no 6, p. 928‑953.
  • Perrot Sandrine, Pommerolle Marie-Emmanuelle et Willis Justin, 2016, « La fabrique du vote  : placer la matérialité au cœur de l’analyse », Politique africaine, 2016, vol. 4, no 144, p. 5‑26.
  • Piazza Pierre, 2014, « Du bertillonnage à l’Europe biométrique » dans Identification et surveillance des individus  : Quels enjeux pour nos démocraties ?, Paris, Éditions de la Bibliothèque publique d’information, p. 13‑25.
  • Rader Anna et Périer Miriam, 2016, « Politiques de la reconnaissance et de l’origine contrôlée  : la construction du Somaliland à travers ses cartes d’électeurs », Politique africaine, 2016, vol. 4, no 144, p. 51‑71.
  • Zambo Belinga Joseph-Marie, 2007, « La scénographie de la déviance dans les scrutins politiques », Cahiers d’études africaines, 2007, vol. 47, no 185, p. 29‑63.

[1] Pour une base de données recensent les technologies développées par pays, voir : Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), « ICTS in Elections Database ; Africa » ; et (Debos 2025)

[2] Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, « ‘Truth is contained in the servers’ : electoral truth and the production of sovereignty in times of technology », Culture and Technologies of the 2017 Kenyan elections.

Posté le 16 février 2026