Researchers are sounding the alarm over China's rapidly growing influence in Africa through the export of its surveillance state model. According to multiple investigations, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is positioning itself to control the infrastructure, data, and AI systems that will shape Africa’s digital future. From supplying facial recognition tools and spyware to training local AI systems using exploited labor in “digital sweatshops,” China is enabling authoritarian regimes across the continent to monitor, censor, and oppress their citizens. In countries like Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, Chinese-made technology is being used to track political dissidents, suppress protests, and silence opposition through mass surveillance, AI sentiment analysis, and data harvesting.

Experts warn this amounts to “surveillance colonialism”—a new form of digital domination where African populations are being exploited for data and labor, only to have that same technology used against them. With cloud services from Huawei and Alibaba expanding across the continent and massive data centers being built, China is embedding itself in the very systems that will govern Africa's digital and political life. These tools are not just neutral technologies—they’re part of a blueprint for authoritarian control. If unchecked, this could shift the balance of geopolitical power, push out Western investment, and severely undermine human rights across the continent.

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SOURCE: Technocracy News