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China’s Police State Goes Global at Surveillance Conference

By Isabel Kua High-tech CCTV, super-accurate DNA-testing technology and facial tracking software: China is promoting its state-of-the-art surveillance and policing tactics abroad. Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city ...

Africa’s Digital Sovereignty in the Era of U.S.-China Great Power Competition

In the increasingly acrimonious competition between the U.S. and China over technology standards, it's often assumed that smaller countries in places ...

China Donates Surveillance System and Vehicles to Help Protect Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway

China's Ambassador to Kenya, Zhou Pingjiang, used a ceremonial outsized key to mark the opening of a new Chinese-financed security surveillance center for the Standard Gauge Railway. It was not specified what kind of surveillance technology and from what manufacturer was ...

Iranian Security Service Buys Advanced Video Surveillance Technology From China

One of China's largest video surveillance companies, Tiandy, is reportedly selling large quantities of sophisticated AI-enabled cameras with facial recognition technology to Iran's Revolutionary Guard and other Iranian security services, according to a report published earlier this month by surveillance research group IPVM.

Burkina Faso Launches New Huawei-Powered Smart City Initiative Using Loan From the China Exim Bank

The Burkina Faso government announced an ambitious new plan last week to build a 650-kilometer fiber-optic network that will connect all of the country's major cities to a new Huawei-powered Smart City platform.  Sensitive to the perception that the ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

The G20 Summit and the Half-Life of a Joke

When it was announced in 2023 that the African Union would become a full member of the G20, I darkly joked on a podcast that the AU’s entry into the body could very well mark the moment the G20 lost its status as one of the most important global coordination forums. Mark my words, I said, soon The Economist will be like “Uhhh, the G20 is OVER – it’s the ...

Biden’s Chinese Tech Dilemma

This week the Biden administration announced an expansion of a Trump-era ban on U.S. investment in 59 Chinese companies seen as having ties to the Chinese military and surveillance sectors. The announcement is another confirmation of how ex-president Trump’s vision of a U.S.-China rivalry has ...

New CSIS Report Examines Huawei’s Burgeoning Cloud Services Business in Emerging Markets

While so much of the attention about Huawei's role in emerging markets like Africa focuses on the company's 5G technology, the reality is that the Chinese telco equipment giant is now expanding far beyond hardware, to offer a number of new services that are becoming increasingly popular ...

Be Wary of All Those “Hyperbolic” Reports Warning of the Dangers of Chinese Technology

The fear that China is going to export digital authoritarianism and repression to Africa is way overblown and oversimplified in Western media reports and think tank analysis cautions Iginio Gagliardone, a media scholar at Wits University in Johannesburg and one of the world's foremost scholars ...

China, Africa and the Internet, Again

The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa recently discussed African elections and, not surprisingly, the conversation became about China.  The lawmakers latched on to a narrative that the Chinese Communist Party is actively trying to ...

China Becomes a Major Focus in U.S. House Hearing About Elections in Africa

China emerged as a prominent theme at a virtual hearing on Tuesday convened by the U.S. House of Representatives's foreign affairs subcommittee on Africa to discuss what the U.S. can do to better support democracy and elections in Africa. Lawmakers from both parties expressed concern about the ...

Reuters: Suspected Chinese Hackers Stole AU Surveillance Video

For the second time in two years, China is being accused of spying on the headquarters of the African Union. A new report published today by the Reuters news service alleges that suspected Chinese hackers infiltrated AU servers and obtained video surveillance files from the ...

Inspired by China’s Example, Nigeria’s Information Minister Wants to Regulate Social Media

Nigeria's Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, sparked widespread outrage on Tuesday when he called for the government to step in and begin to censor online content. "If we don’t regulate social media, it will destroy us," he told a House committee. "The ...
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