Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Huawei and African Safe Cities

The Center for Strategic and International Studies published in November 2019 a brief titled "Watching Huawei's 'Safe Cities'" by Jonathan E. Hillman and Maesea McCalpin.

China's Huawei has signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with 16 African countries to provide "safe city" solutions. The MOUs involve one or more of the following solutions: command centers, CCTV cameras, intelligent video surveillance, crowd monitoring, situational awareness detection, noise monitoring or detection, abandoned object detection, social media monitoring, and facial and license plate recognition technology.

The 16 African countries are: Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, Botswana, Nigeria, Uganda, Cote d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Kenya, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Angola, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt. The question is whether all of these countries will use these products for democratic purposes.