10 Special report China in Africa The Economist May 28th 2022
such event in 2017 Freedom House, a nonprofit group based in
Washington, dc, found that attendees were given a tour of sys
tems for “publicopinion management”, including “realtime
monitoring of negative public opinion” and tools to guide public
opinion to be more positive.
As with African bridges and ports, Chinese firms are also build
ing the physical infrastructure of African media. China has laid
many digital pipes for transmission of content online and via sat
ellite. The Chinese telecoms giant, Huawei, has built about 70% of
Africa’s 4ginfrastructure, supplying the knowhow to monitor
and censor networks. StarTimes, a Chinese satellite firm, is strong
in digital television. Its public profile in Africa is as a tvprovider,
serving 13m subscribers in half of Africa’s 54 countries (plus 27m
more customers across the continent who get content over the in
ternet). Less visibly, it is helping 15 African countries migrate from
analogue to digital transmission, according to a tally by Dani Ma
dridMorales of the University of Sheffield.
In some countries StarTimes transmits the signal for compet
ing channels (in Zambia the company took a 60% stake in the state
broadcaster’s digital provider.) That raises worries about control
of broadcast infrastructure akin to concerns over the dominance
of Huawei in telecoms. “The risk is that then it becomes a choke
point, so whoever controls that platform, controls essentially tele
vision access for the whole country,” says George Sarpong, execu
tive secretary of Ghana’s National Media Commission, a regulator
overseeing media outlets.
Polling suggests attitudes among Africans to China, while dip
ping slightly in recent years, are more positive than in the West.
That may be due to significant Chinesefinanced economic activ
ity, which most Africans see as beneficial. But some stories about
Chinese humanrights abuses may also get less play in certain
outlets. (In 2018 a columnist at Independent Media, a South Afri
can media group in which Chinese statebacked firms hold a 20%
stake, lost his column after writing about the Uyghurs).
Still, negative news stories about Chinese misdeeds in Africa
routinely go viral on social media. On April 20th the sentencing of
a Chinese businessman to 20 years in prison for whipping Rwan
dan workers was celebrated on Twitter. The occasional Xinhua ac
count inside the local newspaper or in an embassy post that wins afew retweets has less chance of turning people’s heads. A Tanza
nian foreign editor says his newspaper cannot publish most mate
rial from Xinhua because it is so “onesided”. He doubts readers
are swayed much by the articles that do appear.
The example of StarTimes reveals a yawning gap between Chi
na’s potential and its actual impact. Like Huawei it is ostensibly a
private company, but it is also clearly backed by the Chinese state.
Mr MadridMorales notes that its founder, Pang Xinxing, travels in
Chinese diplomatic delegations and has met at least 15 African
heads of state or government. The StarTimes brand has spread
across Africa with help from the Chinese government. StarTimes
has provided free equipment (and at least a month of free content)
to hundreds of rural areas under a Chinese initiative to deliver sat
ellite tvto “10,000 villages” in Africa. In some countries, the low
esttier StarTimes customers get international news predomi
nantly from Chinese state media, either cgtnor Xinhuacon
trolledcncWorld.Ofinfluenceandpower
Even so, not a lot of people actually watch cgtn. Just 9% of Tanza
nians surveyed in April for The Economistby Premise had watched
China’s flagship news channel in the latest month. By comparison
73% had watched the bbc. Across the seven countries Premise sur
veyed, cgtndid best in Congo, where 28% of respondents had
watched it in the latest month. But 73% had seen France24. (The
survey skews slightly to wealthier and more urban than average,
but the ages of respondents are representative).
And in Ghana, where just 4% of people had watched cgtnin
the latest month, Mr Sarpong accepts that the danger of StarTimes’
control over digital infrastructure is for now theoretical. But he
says governments need to think harder about regulation to pre
vent it becoming real. He posits an incumbent ruling party that
decides a certain tvstation is crucial ahead of an election. Could
they ask China to shut down the signal? “If you allow the Chinese,
who have a culture of censorship, to own this infrastructure, you
just endanger yourself.”
African countries have not adopted anything like the sophisti
cated opinion monitoring and censorship prevalent in China.
Some governments have passed laws restricting online speech
that echo its approach. But regimes have used blunter tactics
when challenged, shutting down the internet or blocking social
media. Eleven African countries did one or both of these last year,
according to a report in January from 10vpn, a virtual private net
work. Many shutdowns were brief, imposed just ahead of elec
tions or to stifle antigovernment protests. Nigeria blocked Twit
ter for months after the service deleted a tweet by its president.
Yet some African regimes have made use of Chinese knowhow
to go after dissidents and journalists. The Wall Street Journalre
ported that in Zambia in 2019 the Cybercrime Crack Squad, a unit
of the telecoms regulator, enlisted the help of Huawei to track
down and arrest bloggers for an opposition news site. It also found
that in Uganda in 2018 frustrated security officials had asked Hua
wei employees to help crack WhatsApp communications by the
leader of an opposition movement. Huawei engineers penetrated
a group chat, enabling Ugandan authorities to arrest the opposi
tion figure and dozens of supporters and thwart plans for street
demonstrations. (Huawei has denied that its employees conduct
any such hacking).
The report suggests that Mr Sarpong’s hypothetical concern is
no longer so outlandish. If an African government wants to use
the tools and expertise that the Chinese supply to impose censor
ship, somebody from China will help. The longterm worry about
Chinese influence may be less about how ChinausesAfrican me
dia, but more about how African institutionsandgovernments
Connecting the village use the media infrastructure that China has built.n