With Genius Amaraizu, Ph.D. scholar in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics (Communication Studies) with the Humanity and Technoscience Lab in the School of Communication at Northwestern University, USA.

Online | 3:30-5:00 PM (CET) | Registration form will be made available in due course.

E-Border in Africa
This work examines how people imagine, practice, and experience electronic border technologies in West Africa. This is situated within a rhetorical and historical context of global migration governance, security, and border externalization, as well as a contemporary shift toward smart borders and trade. I explore the framing of digital borders and surveillance infrastructures expanding across Africa as tools of security and migration management. Focusing on Seme, Hillacondji, and Aflao, three international land borders between Nigeria and Ghana, I trace how sociotechnical and political imaginaries legitimize border technologies and entangle media infrastructures with mobility. I use ethnography, critical discourse analysis, and archival research to document digital borders as paradoxical sites of imperial circulation and state legitimacy, revealing the new ways they perpetuate historical patterns of control, disruption, and continuity in shaping African migration experiences.