More than a dozen African countries – including Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt – have deployed surveillance devices in recent years through cybersecurity and surveillance firms from countries including Israel, the UK and Germany.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and other Chinese firms have built roughly 70% of the 4G network infrastructure on the continent, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies 2020 report.

China is supporting modernisation in Africa, with countries like Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda getting support for Huawei smart city programmes; while Nigeria announced plans to purchase Chinese digital surveillance cameras on its borders. However, this development comes at a cost.

In Africa, Chinese digital technologies also provide authoritarian governments with tools to spy on the opposition and dissenting voices, says Gorden Moyo, a Zimbabwean scholar and director of the Public Policy and Research Institute of Zimbabwe (PPRIZ). Poor regulatory environments on digital technology have exposed African countries to unwanted digital surveillance that can result in subversion of citizens’ rights, he added.

“Chinese digital technology companies like ZTE and Huawei are all over Africa. But technology is like bees, whose mouths have a sting and honey,” Moyo said during a series of PPRIZ discussions on the implications of Chinese technologies on civil liberties in Africa. “We need to understand the honey we get from China, and the sting that digital technologies from China have on Africa because this has a visible impact on civil liberties.”

Problems with Chinese technology

Moyo said Africa should be concerned about the Chinese digital technologies on the continent, saying they have been weaponised by states to spy on civil society groups, political activists and opposition leaders who are viewed as state enemies by dictatorial African countries.

He referred to popular Ugandan singer and opposition leader Bobi Wine who was spied on using Huawei Chinese digital technology. This came just after the 2019 procurement of $126m worth of closed circuit television camera (CCTV) surveillance by the Ugandan police from Huawei to ‘help control Kampala’s growing crime problem’.

However, an independent investigation has found that Ugandan intelligence officials used the technology to crack Wine’s encrypted communications.

In Ethiopia, there are reports that the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa – built by the Chinese – was bugged. Experts are worried that in Rwanda, surveillance technology is being used to subvert the rights to information, assembly and freedom of movement of the citizens.

“We no longer have private lives, and this has been worsened by [the lack of] legislation that governs surveillance technology in most parts of Africa,” Moyo says. African parliaments, CSOs and accountability institutions must understand digital technology to ensure that citizens’ digital rights are protected through legislative measures, he adds.

Main actors in the spy tech supply chain

Allen Munoriyarwa of the University of Johannesburg says it is important to understand the main actors involved in the supply chain of surveillance technology, their interests in Africa and the power that they yield.

Chinese telecom companies do not operate in isolation but in tandem with Chinese geo-strategic objectives

The main actor is China, which has been channelling billions of dollars for government start-ups for digital technology. China has a lot of influence on authoritarian regimes in Africa.

“We are told that digital technology is imperative to end terrorism in countries like Mozambique, to safeguard private enterprises and to fight crime, but this has given room for Sinofication of Africa by Chinese companies like Huawei, Zhongxing Telecom and ZTE,” Munoriyarwa says. “There is a symbiotic relationship between these companies and the Chinese government as they have backing from the Chinese Communist Party.”

China’s increased involvement in the African telecommunications industry will enhance its global standing, counter Western influence and obtain resources and new export markets to feed its rapidly expanding economy, according to research by the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE).

“Importantly, Chinese telecom companies do not operate in isolation but in tandem with Chinese geo-strategic objectives. This makes the need for effective countervailing strategies all the more important in dealing with Chinese telecommunications challenges in Africa,” the IDE report says.

The report found that Chinese companies such as Huawei, Zhongxing Telecom and ZTE are linked to the Chinese military and intelligence establishments.

Munoriyarwa says Chinese technologies will expand on the continent. “The more we import Chinese technology, the more we allow Chinese surveillance culture to proliferate.” He refers to the tech as weapons to suppress human rights.

Poor regulation and awareness

African countries are getting start-up loans for digital technologies and the Chinese government chips in with guarantees – for example, smart city projects in Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Kenya. But Munoriyarwa says these smart city projects come with surveillance which might violate citizens’ rights.

Digital technology can improve access to information, but what sort of information do citizens have?

“There is a need for regulations by African countries to hold suppliers of these technologies responsible as well as active civic awareness for citizens to understand the growing threat of Chinese technology.”

Another problem for African countries is that even if people talk about digital democracy, very few people have internet access, or understand digital technology, says Obert Hodzi, a China-Africa expert at the University of Liverpool.

He says in Zimbabwe there is 55.7% internet penetration – almost half of the population has no access to the internet and doesn’t know about digital technology and its destructive potential.

“What matters is the kind of regime that African countries have; if we describe Zimbabwe as a comparative authoritarian system or electoral autocracy then what will digital technology do? The bottom line is that digital technology depends on the existing political, legal and economic systems in a country,” Hodzi says.

“Digital technology can improve access to information, but what sort of information do citizens have? In a democratic society like South Africa, there is free use of social media and physical presence is allowed, but in Zambia during former President Edgar Lungu’s era, people could not have physical protests and thousands of people protested online,” Hodzi says.

With Zimbabwe being a highly polarised society, artificial intelligence (AI) and social media can be used to distort political information; an example being a doctored AI picture of opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) leaders putting on President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s scarfs giving the impression they had sold out to ZANU-PF.

Safeguarding Africans through facial recognition tech?

Hodzi says Chinese surveillance technologies come in the form of high-tech facial recognition software, smart cities, and labour-intensive systems with millions of informers and spies, as well as China Communist Party’s comprehensive intelligence networks that control surveillance.

He says African countries will also face the challenge of maintaining the systems. For example, Ethiopia is already failing to maintain its digital surveillance system and they keep going back to Huawei.

While it is good for Africa to embrace digital technology, it must not be done without thinking of the impact it will have on the continent says Lucy Anning, the director of DevAfrica Institute in Accra, Ghana.

“We need win-win agreements because if you do not know much about digital surveillance and AI, how do you even know that you are under surveillance?”

Anning says young people in Africa must reschool themselves, integrate into AI technology and be able to rise to China’s standards to avoid digital exploitation.