CERTIZENS: Certifications of Citizenship in Africa
The CERTIZENS Project focuses on the logics, policies and practices of different regimes of citizen classification, certification and identification in selected African contexts, and their multi-layered effects both on processes of state making and of citizen making.
With Ghana and Uganda as case countries, CERTIZENS addresses the multiple, inter-related dimensions of systems of citizenship certification by addressing four ‘arenas’ – international, national, intermediate and intimate – as follows. It examines so-called global policies promoting strategies and technologies linked to systems of identification and certification for development, and their articulation with national regimes of certification. It explores historical and contemporary forms and practices of national classification, identification and certification of differentiated citizens. It looks at various bureaucracies of certification and at state-citizen encounters within them, as well as at the changing materialities of ID documents (including shifts to digitalization) and their implications. And it goes in close to investigate the intimate, lived effects on differentiated citizens of these often hierarchical and highly uneven systems, processes and practices of certification and identification.
Investigating these relational arenas simultaneously in Ghana and Uganda facilitates important comparative analysis. However, given a global context in which the World Bank estimates one billion people are living without proof of identity – 50% of whom are on the African continent – CERTIZENS has theoretical, policy and practical relevance well beyond the African continent.
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CERTIZENS GHANA
Kojo Opuku Aidoo (CERTIZENS Ghana Project Coordinator)
Certifications of Citizenship in Ghana: The National Arena
This project focuses on the inter-relatedness of historical and political dimensions of Ghana’s national citizenship certification regimes, which are traced from colonial through to post-colonial eras. It will address the ways in which changing political ideologies and governance types over time have affected the evolution of such regimes and their related policies and practices. The project is especially interested in how such systems have generated or denied the authenticity, eligibility and inclusion of citizens within various marginalized groups and among ethnicities that straddle the national borders.
PhD1: Forthcoming – a project to be focused on the Intermediate Arena, and specifically on bureaucracies and practices of certification
PhD 2: Forthcoming – a project to be focused on the Intimate Arena, and specifically on intimacies of identification and lived citizenship
CERTIZENS UGANDA
Godfrey B. Asiimwe (CERTIZENS Uganda Project Coordinator)
Certifications of Citizenship in Uganda: The Intimate Arena. Interrogating governance and intimate implications of citizen certification in Uganda
This project examines the relationship between Uganda’s national regime of citizen certification – with its hierarchical classification of citizenships – and the consequential intimacies of lived citizenship in practice among selected groupings of differently situated and formally differentiated citizens. It will explore both the possibilities and limits generated by tensions between forms of governing and forms of living, in relation to a given yet changing and uneven national context of certification.
Toke Møldrup Wolff (Project Researcher)
Certifications of Citizenship in Uganda: The Intermediate Arena
This project explores the ongoing transition from pre-existing technologies and logics, to emerging and increasingly digitalized infrastructures, of certification and ID management in Uganda, and their implications for state making and citizen making. It will focus especially on: a) the changing materiality and business of producing ID documents; b) the workings of selected bureaucracies of certification; and c) the state-citizen encounters within which registration, certification and documentation of citizens takes place.
PhD1: Forthcoming – a project to be focused on a mix of the National and Intermediate Arenas, and specifically on national and intermediate bureaucratic systems of certification
PhD 2: Forthcoming – a project to be focused on the Intimate Arena, and specifically on intimacies of identification and lived citizenship
INTERNATIONAL POLICY PROJECT
Amanda Wendel Malm (PhD Researcher)
Certifications of Citizenship: the International Arena. ‘Global’ ID policies as travelling models and their encounters in Ghana and Uganda
This project explores the formation and mobility of so-called ‘global’ citizenship identification, registration and certification policies and how these encounter, and are adapted (or not) locally within, national certification settings in Africa. It focuses on the dynamics of policy processes and practices within and between various multilateral organizations promoting policies and strategies related to systems of identification and certification for development, and looks at how these travel and articulate with national governments and other relevant actors specifically in Uganda and Ghana.
OVERALL CERTIZENS COHERENCE, LEARNING AND EXCHANGE
Amanda Hammar (CERTIZENS Project Leader)
Key to the overall CERTIZENS Project is ensuring meaningful coherence in relation to its multiple arenas and elements, alongside intellectual openness and ongoing learning. A core task of the Project Leader is to sustain an overview of all conceptual, methodological and empirical dimensions of the wider Project, make relevant analytical links between them, and support regular exchanges and cross-fertilisation both among all CERTIZENS researchers, and with scholars, policy makers and practitioners engaged with related work outside the CERTIZENS Project frame.
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Amanda Hammar CERTIZENS Project Leader
Associate Professor
Centre of African Studies
University of Copenhagen
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Godfrey Asiimwe CERTIZENS Uganda Project Coordinator
Associate Professor
Department of Development Studies
Makerere University
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Kojo Opoku Aidoo CERTIZENS Ghana Project Coordinator
Senior Research Fellow
Institute of African Studies
University of Ghana
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Toke Møldrup Wolff
CERTIZENS Project Researcher Assistant Professor Centre of African Studies
University of Copenhagen
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Amanda Wendel Malm
CERTIZENS Project PhD Researcher Centre of African Studies
University of Copenhagen
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Isaac Owusu Nsiah CERTIZENS Ghana |
Milcah Abasabyona CERTIZENS Uganda |
Martin Buhamizo
CERTIZENS Uganda
PhD Researcher
Department of Development Studies
Makerere University
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CERTIZENS Ghana |
Agnes Doe Agbanyo 
Alice Troy-Donovan CERTIZENS Project |
Thomas Bierschenk
We will continuously update this page with new research publications.
WORKING PAPER SERIES
The Project is establishing a CERTIZENS Working Paper Series (which will have an ISBN number). The series will facilitate the publication of theoretically and empirically grounded papers generated by CERTIZENS project researchers, as well as by invited researchers working on related themes elsewhere in Africa and potentially in other regions to enhance comparative learning. The Working Paper Series aims to be an open space for developing, testing out and deepening ideas related to the core focus areas of CERTIZENS, as well as going beyond these.
The CERTIZENS Project Leader will act as managing editor of the series. A working editorial group and an advisory board will be constituted by a combination of CERTIZENS and external researchers, ensuring both quality and expansion of the network of contributing scholars.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Hammar, Amanda. 2018. ‘Certifications of citizenship: reflections through an African lens’, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 238-246.
CERTIZENS is a four-year research project (2020-2024) funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Danida, and administered by the Danish Fellowship Centre (DFC).
Co-funding is provided by The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen.
In-kind support is provided by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda.
Watch Project Leader Amanda Hammar introduce the CERTIZENS project and Josephine Ahikire, Principal of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University, on the relevance of CERTIZENS in Uganda and beyond.