Digital Colonialism Beyond Surveillance Capitalism? Coloniality of Knowledge in Nigeria's Emerging Privacy Rights Legislation and Border Surveillance Practices

This article examines the impact of privacy rights norms and North–South technological diffusion on the development of Nigeria's emerging legal regime for data governance, and the relationship between this legal regime and the digitalisation of border control in Nigeria. We show that federal data protection regulations and border control technologies in Nigeria are not characterised by the extractive logics of surveillance capitalism, which is the focus of several contemporary critiques of ‘digital colonialism’. Nonetheless, the country's data governance regime and its digital borders have been shaped by Northern-produced norms, practices, and technical tools – interacting with the interests and agency of local actors – through both legislative and technological influences. Critically analysing the co-production of law and digital infrastructures highlights the coloniality of knowledge relating to data protection, privacy rights, and digital mobility control. These cases suggest that digital colonialism can be productively analysed beyond the scope of surveillance capitalism.