Several of China’s largest telecommunications communications companies including ZTE, Dahua and China Telecom are reportedly working closely with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to shape influence standards for facial recognition, video monitoring, and city and vehicle surveillance, according to leaked documents published by the Financial Times.

Why Is This Important for Africa?

• “African states tend to go along with what is being put forward by China and the ITU as they don’t have the resources to develop standards themselves,” said Richard Wingfield, head of legal at Global Partners Digital, a company working on human rights on the internet.

• Data from African markets is of particular interest to Chinese companies, who are looking to improve the accuracy of their facial recognition algorithms, particularly to identify people of color.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The combination of Chinese-influenced ITU standards with the growing ubiquity of Chinese-built/managed telecommunications infrastructure that is now increasingly common throughout the developing world would go a long way to cement Chinese standards in these emerging technologies. This could potentially make it very difficult, if not impossible, for countries and companies from the US/JPN/EU to compete in places like Africa.