Is China Wiring Africa For Surveillance?

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Huawei has invested billions of dollars in Africa over the last two decades, providing affordable cell phones, internet access, and telecommunications networks to the continent. Over the last few months Huawei has closed major deals in Africa to get more areas on the grid. The company says it's bridging the digital divide, but others suspect it's wiring the continent for surveillance."

Comments

Re:Different approaches to aid

[Anonymous Coward]

As a South African...

Firstly we will take from whoever gives it. Our politicians whine about western politicians as much as they do about the Chinese. The Chinese typically care about business more than they do about politics which makes them easier to work with. Other than stopping the Dalai Lama from visiting our country I can't think of any other strings they've pulled publicly.

Africa is natural resource rich, thats why

[Camael]

Natural resources is the name of the game. And its not just China eyeing the riches.

One of the more geographically remote locations was Africa, where Japan and China, and to a growing extent South Korea and India, are in fierce competition to win contracts for energy and mineral rights on the continent.

Africa’s allure is easy to understand. Libya ranks ninth in world oil reserves, Nigeria 10th and Angola 16th. For natural gas reserves, Nigeria ranks eighth, Algeria ninth and Egypt 15th.

In addition, Africa holds 95.5 percent of the world’s platinum reserves, 58.3 percent of all diamonds, 49.2 percent of all cobalt, 45.8 percent of the chromium supply and 27.1 percent of the world’s manganese.

Re:Exfiltrate Africa?

[TheRaven64]

Exfiltrate isn't a very uncommon word in computer security. The grandparent's post, however, was largely meaningless. More of a 'hey, I've just learned a new word, now I am going to use it in a sentence' sort of thing.

Re:Exfiltrate Africa?

[Anonymous Coward]

(me again)

Nope. Except for "Ni Hao" (hello) which I hardly ever use...and a couple of other phonemes that I've learned.

In fact, "they" seem to prefer it that way. In our office (somewhere in Europe) there's 3 lines of communication. One for, as we are called, "local staff" in our "local" language (not English); another one in English which is the crossover language; and Chinese, where all the things that we "locals" can't/don't participate....of course, we get upset and reciprocate by starting our own half of the meeting in a language most of them can't understand; which I think is not easy to do for our colleagues in the UK as they don't have that 3rd language to fall back on (yes, I know there are other languages besides English in the UK. I have friends in Wales).

When I joined the company I wanted to learn the language and had all this curiosity about chinese culture. They seem to have systematically drained any kind of interest from me.