The U.S. government informed a number of key suppliers of Huawei, including chip giant Intel, that it’s revoking certain licenses to sell equipment to the Chinese telecom giant. Neither Huawei nor Intel have commented on the move and the U.S. Commerce Department has not publicly revealed which licenses are at issue.

African telecom operators are no doubt following this story very closely, given that so much of their existing networks rely on Huawei equipment. If the U.S., for example, cuts off the supply of chips that are used in Huawei network routers, that could pose enormous problems for African telecom operators who would potentially be unable to maintain and upgrade their existing networks.