ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the coordinated use of satellite, drone, and mobile phone technologies produces vertical infrastructures of surveillance in Africa. Focusing on the monitoring of Al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, the chapter contributes to critical studies of surveillance in three ways. First, it inscribes African geopolitical and technological contexts within critical discussions of contemporary surveillance, which tend to focus on the high-tech and/or urban environments of the post-industrial West. Second, it advances a critique of surveillance and race that moves beyond visible light indicators alone to account for the growing use of infrared drone imagery and mobile phone metadata in monitoring and targeting practices in Africa. Finally, it suggests that to fully understand the power effects of vertical surveillance, it is necessary to approach these three technologies relationally since the surveillance work they perform is structured extensively across technological platforms, data sets, and perspectives.
