African Demand for Chinese Surveillance Technology

While many countries around the world, particularly G7 states, have largely outlawed the use of Chinese surveillance technology made by companies like Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision among others, that is not the case in Africa. Dozens of governments across the continent have installed so-called "Smart City" initiatives that use networked camera systems, including some powered by AI.

While there are concerns among some civil society groups that Chinese-made surveillance technology will be misused by authoritarian governments, those concerns are often overshadowed by the need for improved security, traffic management, and other benefits promised by Smart City manufacturers.

Bulelani Jili, a research fellow at Harvard University and one of the foremost scholars on the use of Chinese technology in Africa, contends that too often in the debate over the deployment of surveillance tech, in particular, outsiders tend to focus more on the supplier rather than the customer. Bulelani joins Eric and Cobus to discuss his latest research on the topic.

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