Author ORCID Identifier
Harsha Man Maharjan: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8231-5716
Abstract
This paper introduces the concept of ID support to account for the promises and risks of international mechanisms and interventions that contribute to the rapid expansion of digital ID systems in the Global South. It uses Nepal as a case because this country received two grants from a multilateral donor to plan and implement this system and received services from a French multinational tech company to prepare the technological infrastructure. Analyzing the interviews, official documents and news media content, it elaborates that ID support appears in three forms: technical support (knowledge), financial support (finance), and technological support (technology). It conceptualizes ID support by drawing upon digital capitalism, a concept related to the political economy of digital technologies, and from projectification, a concept from organization studies. The paper defines ID support as the dynamic conditions created at the intersection of digital capitalism, in the form of the power and politics of foreign aid and capital accumulation by multinational tech companies, and projectification, as the need to implement IDs as development projects funded by international donors in the Global South. The study emphasizes that the fields of ICT4D and ID4D need to foreground support as one of key components for inquiry.
Recommended Citation
Maharjan, H. M.
(In press).
ID Support: Digital Capitalism and the Digital National Identification Development Project in Nepal.
Information Technology for Development.
Available at:
https://aisel.aisnet.org/itd/vol32/iss1/35