The London School of Economics posted on 20 May 2021 a commentary titled "Chinese Digital Tech in Africa: Moral Panics and the Messy Reality of Surveillance" by Iginio Gagliardone, University of Witwatersrand.
The author concluded that while China's role in digital infrastructure in Africa has been massive, its involvement has also offered huge opportunities for oversimplification, reducing complex processes to the influence of one actor and opposing stereotyped versions of the open vs the closed Internet. State and corporate surveillance from all sources are threats to the users that were once supposed to be ones shaping cyberspace, but one cannot focus on only one element of this situation to bring some of the power back to the users.
