Bulelani Minenhle Jili

BULELANI JILI, then a graduate student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was awarded a grant in April 2022 to aid research on “Leasing Out Sovereignty; The proliferation of Chinese Surveillance Technologies in Africa,” supervised by Dr. Jean Jean Comaroff. The project, based on ethnographic, documentary, and archival research, will investigate the spread of Chinese surveillance technology in Africa, specifically in Kenya. Its principal goal is to explore the effects of new digital infrastructures on 1) state sovereignty and the governance of local populations, including the management of crime and the enforcement of economic regulation; 2) civil society, with respect to the sense of in/security, and of un/freedom, it instills in citizens; and 3) patterns of social and material inequality. What, further, are its hidden, unintended consequences in Kenya? And, finally, what does the spread of Chinese digital infrastructure, exemplified by this case, augur for the future of China in Africa, a question with significant implications for the global order at large.