For Africa, Chinese-Built Internet Is Better Than No Internet at All
Foreign Policy Magazine Report
Compiled by Noor Majid
The Chinese telecommunications company Huawei has made huge inroads in Africa in recent years even as the United States urges its allies around the world to avoid working with the firm over cybersecurity concerns.
Huawei has built about 70 percent of the continent’s 4G networks, vastly outpacing European rivals, according to Cobus van Staden, a senior China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs. The construction is often accompanied by loans from Chinese state banks, which are approved faster and with fewer conditions than loans from international institutions.
While concerns about Huawei are shared by other countries around the world, in Africa they are largely overshadowed by the imperative for greater internet access. The continent is home to some of the world’sgrowing economies, and its population is expected to double by 2050.
“At least for the time being, Africa doesn’t have any other cost or competency alternatives,” said Howard French, who teaches at the Columbia School of Journalism and has been the New York Times bureau chief in West and Central Africa and in China.
The United States believes Huawei and other Chinese telecommunications companies that build critical infrastructure around the world might be installing so-called backdoors and using them to spy on behalf of the Chinese government. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has threatened to withhold intelligence from countries that use Chinese networks.
Huawei’s founder has told the that his company has never spied for China. But some experts are skeptical.
“This idea that Huawei would never reveal anything to the Chinese state if asked is implausible because any Chinese company has to operate within the rules of the Chinese state,” said French, the author of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power.
In January 2018, the French newspaper reported that Beijing had bugged the headquarters of the African Union—whose construction was paid for and built by China. Every night for five years the entire contents of the building’s computer systems—which were installed by Huawei—were reportedly transferred to China. Microphones were found embedded in the desks and walls, according to the report. Both China and the African Union dismissed the allegations.