Friday, July 12, 2019

China's Impact on Facial Recognition Programs in Africa

The South African Mail & Guardian published on 8 July 2019 a commentary titled "Tuning Surveillance Software with African Faces" by Bulelani Jili, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research.

African states, including Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Zambia, with the support of China, are following the Communist Party of China's efforts to obtain data, which is threatening traditional conceptions of privacy. These software surveillance programs capture personal data that result in one of the world's most sophisticated and racially diversified facial recognition databases.