"Zimbabwe Turns To Chinese Technology To Expand Surveillance Of Citizens", 17 January 2023

In early 2021, Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially opened the country’s National Data Center, proclaiming the Chinese-built data hub key to the country’s economic advancement.

The center compiles information from government records along with material from private companies, such as banks. Leaders of human rights and civil society groups worry that the data center can be a way for the government to track citizens’ activities and suppress dissent, in violation of Zimbabwe’s constitution.

It is Zimbabwe’s latest project embracing the use of Chinese surveillance technology. China has provided Zimbabwe with nearly $240 million to develop NetOne, the national mobile telecommunications system, which has its own data centers. Mnangagwa has boasted that the government can track where people walk, who they talk to, even where they sleep.

Nompilo Simanje of the Media Institute of Southern Africa Zimbabwe said the statement by the president is “a clear example that the government has the necessary tools and the capacity to monitor people,” according to a report by The Economist.

Zimbabwe’s use of surveillance, which existed under previous president Robert Mugabe, has accelerated recently.

In recent years, the Chinese technology company Huawei has launched its Smart Cities program in Zimbabwe. The government has signed on with Cloudwalk Technologies and Hikvision, both Chinese companies, to install facial recognition technology in public spaces. Zimbabwe is the proving ground that will train the system to identify faces of people with dark complexions, something artificial intelligence has difficulty doing, Quartz reported.

Human and civil rights advocates are ringing alarms, saying that China has helped Zimbabwe create an environment that allows the government to target dissidents and violate citizens’ constitutional right to privacy.