When people think of China in Africa, they picture roads and railways and massive ports. That’s part of the story. But there’s another revolution happening right now, and it’s quieter, deeper, and way more consequential. It’s China’s digital footprint in Africa.
The New Digital Silk Road
From 5G networks to smart cities to the cloud infrastructure that’ll store your government’s most sensitive data, China’s basically hardwiring itself into Africa’s digital backbone. It’s branded under the “Digital Silk Road,” which is basically the tech arm of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And what’s happening is nothing short of a fundamental re-shape of how Africans connect, communicate, and even govern.
Huawei and ZTE are dominant in Africa’s telecom landscape. According to research by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, over 70% of Africa’s 4G infrastructure has Chinese involvement. Huawei alone operates in more than 40 African countries. That’s one company touching the digital lives of 1.4 billion people across an entire continent.
Here’s the thing nobody really talks about. We’re talking about the control:
- Finance – China is a leading lender to Africa, with Chinese financial institutions extending over $182 billion in loans to 49 African countries and regional organizations since 2000.
- Surveillance systems -Beijing has deployed smart city surveillance systems in at least nine African countries, integrating Chinese technologies like CCTV, biometrics, and AI for urban management and security
- Digital identity databases – China’s technology and investments help many African states establish and upgrade their digital ID systems, which are increasingly critical for government operations.
- The cloud infrastructure that’ll power Africa’s artificial intelligence revolution.
While these projects boost connectivity and innovation, they also raise vital questions about data sovereignty, cybersecurity, and technological independence — reshaping the balance of digital power across the continent.
The Scope of China’s Digital Investments in Africa
Beijing’s tech footprint is transforming Africa’s future — but at what cost to digital sovereignty? Let’s have a deep dive into the infrastructure, cloud systems, and fintech networks shaping the continent’s digital growth and reshaping global power dynamics.
1. Telecommunications Infrastructure: Connectivity as Strategic Leverage
Start with the basics: if you want to dominate a continent’s digital future, you need to own the pipes that carry the data. Huawei and ZTE have built and upgraded thousands of kilometers of fiber optic cables, mobile base stations, and 5G towers across Africa. They’re basically laying the electrical wiring for an entire continent’s digital nervous system.
Kenya’s 5G Leadership and the Konza Story
Kenya shows you how this actually works in practice. Huawei is deploying 5G towers and, also, central to Konza Technopolis, Kenya’s $5 billion smart city project near Nairobi. Now, here’s where it gets interesting: they’re also partnering with Safaricom to upgrade the underlying infrastructure for M-Pesa, the mobile money system that literally more than 50 million customers across eight African countries depend on.
Now, what’s underneath M-Pesa? It’s the technical infrastructure that allows users to deposit cash with agents, send money, pay bills, and access financial services using their mobile phones, often via the SIM Tool Kit (STK) or the M-Pesa app or the USSD. Without this technology, rural areas can’t access mobile money. And Huawei? They’re the ones who’ve been upgrading this infrastructure. So when you send money on M-Pesa, you’re literally using Chinese-built technology. That’s the kind of deep integration we’re talking about.
Ethiopia’s Big Bet
Ethiopia spent $1.6 billion on telecom modernization. The equipment came from ZTE and Huawei. The government’s also rolling out a digital ID system, another Chinese-backed project. Now, on the surface, this seems great: modernized telecoms, better government services, right? But think about what happens next: Ethiopia’s telecom infrastructure is now dependent on Chinese vendors for maintenance, upgrades, and spare parts.
Good to note that China is the single largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ethiopia. As of mid-2024, of the roughly US$3.9 billion in FDI Ethiopia attracted, nearly 50% came from Chinese companies
Nigeria’s Quiet Expansion
Nigeria’s different. It’s not waiting for big government contracts. Chinese companies are already woven into Nigeria’s private telecom sector, extending coverage to rural areas that Western companies deemed unprofitable. ZTE’s doing most of this work. It’s a smart strategy: get into the places nobody else wants to go, become essential, and then you’ve got a permanent foothold.
The Internet Growth Story
The number that matters: the internet penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa was around 12% in 2015. By 2023, it was over 35%. That’s a massive jump. And yeah, Chinese equipment played a huge role in that. But let’s be real about what comes with it: dependency. African countries now rely on Chinese vendors for maintenance, hardware upgrades, cybersecurity systems, everything. If something breaks, you call Huawei or ZTE. If you need a security patch, you wait for Beijing to provide it. That’s not necessarily malicious, but it does mean China has leverage.
2. Digital Finance and E-Payments: The Fintech Revolution
Africa has this interesting position in the global economy. It didn’t develop banking infrastructure the same way Europe did. But that meant when mobile money came along, it just leapfrogged the whole banking system. Now China’s looking at this and thinking: “We can control this too.”
How the Money’s Actually Moving
Ant Group, which owns Alipay, and Huawei Pay have signed agreements with African banks and telecom companies to enable cross-border payments and e-wallets. In Kenya, they’ve integrated with M-Pesa to make it easier to send money between Africa and China. That seems convenient, right? And it is. But it also means that transaction data, payment patterns, user information, all of it flows through systems ultimately controlled by Chinese companies.
Think about this: if you’re a small business owner in Kenya and you’re using M-Pesa to buy from a Chinese supplier, that entire transaction chain, the amount, the frequency, what you’re buying, who you’re buying from; it’s all visible to Chinese fintech companies. That’s valuable data. Not for surveillance necessarily, but for understanding African markets, for predicting which businesses are successful, for understanding consumer behavior. That’s competitive intelligence.
PalmPay and OPay: The Real Story
PalmPay and OPay are the names you should know. PalmPay, backed by Chinese investors, hit 10 million users in Nigeria by 2022. OPay, also Chinese-backed, is doing even better in some markets. They’re fundamentally changing how Nigerians buy things online, send money, and borrow money.
Let me explain why this matters beyond just payment processing. These apps offer microloans. You download the app, use it a few times, and suddenly the algorithm decides you’re creditworthy and offers you a loan. No bank visit. No paperwork. Just instant credit. Sounds great, and for millions of people it’s transformative. But here’s the thing: these algorithms are opaque. You don’t know how they’re evaluating you. You don’t know if they’re using race, gender, location, or other sensitive factors in their decision-making. And there’s basically no regulatory oversight.
The Privacy Problem
These platforms are great at financial inclusion, which is real and important. But they’re also collecting massive amounts of personal data: financial history, location data, phone contact lists, everything. In many African countries, data protection laws barely exist or aren’t enforced. So technically, these companies could sell this data, share it with their parent companies in China, use it however they want. And you’d probably never know.
The question keeps coming back: if I’m a poor farmer in Nigeria using an app to get a microloans, am I getting access to credit and economic opportunity, or am I just feeding data into a surveillance machine that’ll eventually be used to profile me in ways I can’t predict or control? Probably both, honestly.
3. Smart Cities and E-Government Systems: Efficiency and Surveillance
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. China’s exporting its entire approach to city management, and it includes surveillance systems that would make most Western democracies nervous.
The Cameras in Kampala
Uganda deployed Huawei’s “Safe City” system for security and surveillance. In Kampala alone, that’s over 3,000 CCTV cameras integrated into a centralized monitoring system. Think about that: 3,000 cameras watching a city. Connected to a system that can identify faces, track movements, flag suspicious behavior based on algorithms that you can’t audit or question.
The government says it’s for security. And maybe some of it is. Fewer criminals operate when they know they’re being watched. But those same cameras can be used to track protesters, monitor ethnic minorities, suppress dissent, or just conduct broad-based surveillance of the population. History shows us that happens.
Ethiopia’s doing the same thing with Huawei’s Safe City platform. Zambia and Cameroon have Chinese-built ICT platforms for government services. On the surface, this is great: citizens can get permits and licenses online instead of dealing with corrupt officials. But these systems also collect data, and that data goes to servers controlled by Chinese companies or the Chinese government.
The Efficiency vs. Freedom Trade-off
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that nobody really wants to say out loud: these systems actually work. They make cities cleaner, safer in some ways, more efficient. Traffic moves better. Crime goes down in monitored areas. Government services get faster. People like this stuff.
The problem is that the convenience comes with a surveillance state attached. It’s the model China uses at home; citizens have less privacy, but public services are efficient and reliable. And now countries like Uganda and Ethiopia are adopting the technology without necessarily adopting the oversight mechanisms or transparency requirements that might keep it from being abused.
We’re basically seeing an export of a governance model, not just technology. And most people don’t realize that’s happening.
4. Cloud Computing and Data Centers: The Infrastructure of AI and Analytics
Remember when data used to be stored on servers in your country? Not anymore. Now it’s floating somewhere in the cloud, which is just somebody else’s computer. And increasingly, that computer is owned by Chinese companies.
Where Africa’s Data Is Going
Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud have launched data centers in South Africa and Egypt. These aren’t small operations; we’re talking multi-million-dollar investments with the capacity to store petabytes of data. That’s government records, business data, personal information, everything. All stored in Chinese-managed systems.
The theory is that this keeps data local and creates African tech infrastructure. The reality is more complicated. Yes, the servers are physically in South Africa or Egypt. But the software that runs them, the security protocols, the access logs, the ability to move or copy that data somewhere else; that’s all controlled by Chinese companies. If the US or another Western power decides they want to embargo China, or if there’s a geopolitical crisis, what happens to African data stored in these Chinese systems?
Nobody’s really thought through that scenario.
The Data Sovereignty Question
Here’s what keeps tech policy people up at night: who actually controls your data? In theory, it’s the government or company that owns it. In practice, whoever owns the infrastructure that stores it has enormous leverage. If Egypt’s government stores critical infrastructure data in a Huawei server, and then China says “we need that data,” what exactly is Egypt supposed to do? Go to war? Impose sanctions?
This isn’t paranoid speculation. This is the kind of thing that happens in international relations. Countries use control of infrastructure as leverage. And by building data centers in Africa, China’s essentially creating leverage over African nations’ most sensitive information.
The optimistic version is that China just wants to build infrastructure and make money. The pessimistic version is that they’re positioning themselves to be able to access African government data, African business secrets, African military intelligence, whenever they want. Probably the truth is somewhere in between, but that uncertainty itself is the problem.
Strategic Motives Behind Beijing’s Expansion
Why’s China doing this? It’s not charity. Let’s think through the actual motives.
Economic Leverage
First, there’s obvious economic leverage. By dominating Africa’s telecom sector, China makes sure African companies need to buy Chinese equipment and services. That’s great for Huawei and ZTE. It’s also great for the Chinese government because these tech companies are basically extensions of state power. They’re not independent private companies in the way Western tech companies pretend to be.
Setting the Rules of the Game
Second, and this is subtle, China’s essentially setting technical standards. When African countries adopt Chinese technology, they also adopt Chinese technical standards. Not necessarily by choice, but just because that’s what their infrastructure uses. And when you set the technical standard, you have enormous power because everyone else has to build around it. Western companies now have to build technology that works with Huawei infrastructure, which means they’re accommodating Chinese designs, Chinese security protocols, Chinese ways of thinking about data.
Eventually, this becomes the norm. It’s just how things work. And then Western tech companies are the ones that have to adapt to Chinese infrastructure, not the other way around.
Soft Power and Influence
Third, the cultural stuff. Huawei runs ICT academies across Africa, training African tech professionals. Scholarships bring African engineers to China to study. This builds relationships, creates people who are sympathetic to China, creates networks. When someone’s studied in China, learned Mandarin, made friends there, they’re going to be more open to Chinese technology and Chinese investment. That’s not manipulation; that’s just how human relationships work. But on a scale across a continent, it’s incredibly powerful soft power.
Geopolitical Positioning
Finally, there’s pure geopolitical strategy. The US has been focused on the Middle East for decades. Europe’s obsessed with its own problems. China looks at Africa and sees a continent with a billion people and tremendous resources that’s been left underinvested. By providing infrastructure, by being present, by becoming essential, China builds relationships and influence. If there’s a UN vote or a geopolitical crisis, China’s got friends in Africa. It’s not overtly military; it’s structural. But it works.
The Belt and Road Initiative Financing Model: Understanding the Debt Trap Risk
Here’s the thing about Chinese infrastructure investments that most people don’t understand: the money’s not free. It usually comes with strings attached.
How the Loans Actually Work
Most of these digital projects aren’t financed by China’s government directly. They’re financed through loans from the China Exim Bank or the China Development Bank. These are banks, not charities. They expect to get paid back.
The loans are actually pretty reasonable on the surface: lower interest rates than Western banks would offer, longer repayment periods. African governments look at this and think “Great, we can afford this.” But there’s usually a condition: you have to hire Chinese companies to build the infrastructure. Specifically, you probably have to hire Huawei or ZTE. Those companies then subcontract with other Chinese suppliers. The money flows through the system, and eventually most of it ends up back in China anyway.
The Lock-in Problem
Once you’ve built your entire telecom infrastructure on Huawei equipment, financed by Chinese loans, your government is now paying two streams of money to China: loan repayments and ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs. And those costs don’t really end. Infrastructure requires maintenance. Software needs updates. Equipment eventually needs replacement.
So you’re essentially locked in. You can’t switch to another vendor without massive additional expense. You can’t reduce your dependence on Chinese technology without ripping out and replacing your entire infrastructure. You’re paying interest on money that was used to build systems that only Chinese companies can maintain.
Imagine if the US did this in Latin America in the 1970s, which, spoiler alert, it kind of did. You build infrastructure that benefits the Americans, keep the country dependent on American spare parts and expertise, and suddenly that country can’t make independent decisions anymore because they’re so dependent on your technology and you’re their creditor.
What Happens When Things Break
Let’s say a country takes a $500 million loan from the China Exim Bank to modernize its telecom infrastructure. The loan requires them to hire Huawei to build it. Equipment costs maybe $300 million. Huawei’s profit is maybe $100 million. The rest goes to various vendors, logistics, installation, etc. But most of it stays in China. Meanwhile, the country now owes back $600+ million (with interest) over the next fifteen years.
Now, if the government’s lucky, the telecom infrastructure generates revenue and they can service the debt. But if revenue doesn’t materialize, or if maintenance costs are higher than expected, or if there’s a economic recession and tax revenue drops, suddenly that country’s in trouble. Do they default on the loan? Do they cut other spending? Do they keep paying even though it means less money for education or healthcare?
These aren’t hypothetical questions. There are African countries dealing with exactly this situation right now.
The Strategic Lock-in
And here’s the thing that really matters from a strategic perspective: once a country is locked into Chinese infrastructure and Chinese debt, Beijing has leverage over your country’s policy. If you’re considering allowing American tech companies to compete, China can remind you that you’re their debtor. If you’re thinking about joining a political alliance that opposes China, China can threaten to call in the debt. Infrastructure becomes a political tool.
This isn’t conspiracy theory stuff. This is how international power works. Money and infrastructure are how countries maintain influence.
The African Perspective: Opportunities, Risks, and Digital Sovereignty
Let’s step back and think about this from an African perspective. It’s not all bad. It’s complicated.
Opportunities for African Development
Connectivity that Actually Matters
Millions of Africans have internet access now who didn’t have it five years ago. That’s not trivial. A kid in rural Kenya can now access the entire sum of human knowledge. A farmer in Nigeria can watch YouTube videos about crop rotation, check commodity prices in real-time, connect with markets she never would’ve reached before. That’s transformative. That’s real human benefit.
Jobs, Skills, Actual Opportunities
When Huawei or ZTE sets up a regional hub, they hire local people. They train them. They create a tech ecosystem. Countries like Kenya and Nigeria now have thriving tech sectors that didn’t exist twenty years ago. These companies employ thousands of people and train tens of thousands more. That’s not propaganda; that’s verifiable economic activity.
Government Actually Works Better
E-government systems reduce corruption. Instead of paying a bribe to a government official, you just go online and process your permit digitally. Services get faster. There’s an audit trail. Citizens know what things actually cost. That’s real improvement in people’s daily lives.
Credit for People Who Were Never Getting Credit
Those microfinance platforms, PalmPay and OPay? They’ve given credit to millions of people who would never get a loan from a traditional bank. A woman running a small grocery store in Lagos can now get working capital for her business through an app. That’s not small. That’s economic freedom for people who didn’t have it.
The Real Risks
You Become a Consumer, Not a Creator
Here’s the long-term problem: if every piece of digital infrastructure comes from China, African countries stop building their own tech capacity. Why invest in developing local software companies when you can just buy cheap Chinese solutions? But eventually, that means Africa becomes dependent on imported technology, not a creator of technology. And technology is where the money and power are in the 21st century.
It’s like if all of Africa’s cars came from one foreign country: you’re not developing a manufacturing sector, you’re not training engineers, you’re not creating high-wage jobs. You’re just buying.
Your Personal Data Isn’t Protected
Let’s be real: most African countries don’t have strong data protection laws. The ones that do usually don’t enforce them. So if you’re using PalmPay and your data gets shared with Chinese marketing companies, or if Huawei accesses traffic camera footage to identify dissidents, who’s going to stop them? Nobody. There’s no recourse.
This is especially scary when you think about surveillance systems. If Uganda has 3,000 Huawei cameras tracking the city, and there’s no oversight, no transparency, no ability for citizens to audit how that data’s being used, then you’ve got a surveillance machine with no checks on it.
You Get Stuck with Other People’s Debt
We talked about this already, but it deserves repeating: when you take out a $500 million loan and the economy slows down, you’re in trouble. And you’re in trouble to China specifically, a country that has very different foreign policy interests than Western countries. If China decides to pressure you politically, they can leverage your debt. That’s not theoretical; it’s leverage that can be exercised.
Infrastructure Becomes a Geopolitical Vulnerability
Imagine there’s a conflict between Africa and China, or between the US and China, and the US decides to sanction Chinese companies. Suddenly all of Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure is at risk. No parts, no updates, no security patches. Or imagine China cuts off access to African data as retaliation for some political disagreement. What does Africa do then?
These scenarios seem unlikely now, but they’re the kind of thing that could happen, and if it does, Africa’s in a bad position.
Global Reactions and Competing Interests: The Tech Geopolitics of Africa
China’s not the only country that’s noticed Africa’s digital future is up for grabs. This is turning into a real competition.
The Western Alternative: More Expensive, More Principled, Less Practical
The US started the Global Gateway initiative. The EU has its Global Gateway program. The G7 created Build Back Better World. These are supposed to be alternatives to Chinese investment. They emphasize transparency, environmental standards, labor rights, democratic governance. All good things, obviously.
But, they’re way more expensive. They come with conditions. They move slower. If you’re an African country that needs telecommunications infrastructure built in the next year, not five years, China’s offering is a lot more attractive than a Western program that requires environmental impact assessments and audits, and compliance certifications.
Also, Western countries are rich, so they have less urgency around this. China’s desperate to recycle its capital, to find new markets, to expand its sphere of influence. That desperation can look a lot like enthusiasm and partnership.
India’s Playing a Different Game
India’s emerging as an interesting alternative. Indian tech companies are building presence in Africa, but with a different approach. Open-source software, data-sharing initiatives, technology transfer, capacity building. India’s saying: let’s build infrastructure together, let’s transfer knowledge, let’s create local capacity.
It’s a different philosophy. Less extractive. More focused on building up African capacity rather than creating dependency. But India’s also not as rich as China and can’t throw around capital the same way. So it’s attracting a different kind of partnership: countries that want to build tech capacity, not just get infrastructure.
The African Balancing Act
Smart African countries aren’t choosing sides. They’re doing what nations have always done: they’re playing different powers against each other. Kenya accepts Chinese investment but also works with Western companies. Nigeria spreads its partnerships across China, the US, India, everyone. It’s pragmatic. You get the best deal you can from each source, and you avoid letting any single power dominate.
Alternatively, if China’s the only one offering the financing and technology you need, you can’t really negotiate. You take what you can get. So the whole premise of “balanced partnerships” only works if the Western countries are actually competitive.
Country Case Studies: China’s Digital Presence Across Africa
Kenya: The Smart City Pioneer
Kenya’s the model for how this works. Huawei’s leading the 5G rollout. They’re central to Konza Technopolis, the $5 billion smart city project. Konza’s supposed to be Africa’s answer to Silicon Valley, this gleaming tech hub where companies innovate and Africa becomes a global tech player.
Here’s the honest assessment: Konza’s not really happened yet. It’s still being built. There are office parks and a few tech companies, but it hasn’t become the transformative hub it was supposed to be. But that’s not really Huawei’s fault; that’s policy, investment, and cultural factors. What Huawei’s done is created the infrastructure for it to potentially happen.
Safaricom (one of Africa’s biggest telecom companies) and Huawei are partners, and that partnership’s deep. It’s not just equipment; it’s technology transfer, expertise, integration with Huawei’s global network. Kenya’s essentially saying: we’re going to modernize our infrastructure with Chinese help, and we’re going to do it in a way that benefits our own companies and maintains some independence.
Whether that’s actually working, or whether Kenya’s just slowly becoming dependent, is an open question.
Nigeria: Fintech Leadership and Rapid Growth
Nigeria’s different from Kenya. Nigeria’s fintech boom happened partly because the government wasn’t regulating it closely. That allowed innovation and rapid growth. Chinese companies moved in and capitalized on that freedom. PalmPay and OPay exploded because they were fast, they had good user interfaces, and they offered microloans before anyone else was doing it at scale.
Now the Nigerian government’s starting to regulate more closely, and fintech companies are adjusting. But the pattern’s already established: Nigerian consumers are used to using Chinese apps for financial transactions. That’s the infrastructure now.
However, Nigeria is not dependent on China the way some countries are. Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem is diverse, with local companies competing against Chinese companies. But the Chinese companies have massive advantages: backing from Chinese investors who are patient and willing to lose money long-term, lower cost structures, willingness to operate in less regulated environments.
Nigeria’s case shows you how this plays out: Chinese companies move in, establish dominance through scale and favorable conditions, and then local companies have to compete against them. Sometimes local companies win. Sometimes they get bought by Chinese companies. Sometimes they just get overwhelmed.
Ethiopia: Government-Led Digital Transformation
Ethiopia’s taking a different approach. The government’s leading the digital transformation, not private companies. They’re modernizing telecommunications, rolling out digital ID, building e-government systems. And they’re doing it with Chinese partners: ZTE and Huawei.
This is strategic dependency at a different level. The government’s basically outsourcing its entire digital infrastructure to Chinese companies. On one hand, that’s efficient; China’s done this before and can execute. On the other hand, the Ethiopian government is now completely dependent on Chinese technology for critical state functions.
If there’s political tension with China, if sanctions get imposed, if technical issues arise, Ethiopia’s government system could be vulnerable. And from a surveillance perspective, if Ethiopia’s government data is stored in systems designed by Chinese companies, then China has potential access to that data.
Ethiopia shows you the extreme case of how this could play out: not just commercial infrastructure, but government infrastructure, directly controlled by foreign companies.
South Africa: Africa’s Cloud Computing Hub
South Africa’s hosting Africa’s largest Huawei Cloud data center. South Africa’s more sophisticated than some African countries in terms of technology and governance, so they can negotiate better terms and maintain more oversight. But it’s still the same basic pattern: African data going into Chinese-controlled servers.
South Africa’s also positioned as the regional hub for Southern Africa. So Huawei’s not just serving South Africa; they’re serving the region. That’s leverage and influence extended across multiple countries.
The Future of Africa’s Digital Sovereignty: Navigating the Crossroads
Africa’s at a crossroads. The digital infrastructure being built right now is going to shape the continent’s future for decades. Get it right and Africa becomes a digital powerhouse. Get it wrong and Africa becomes a digital colony, dependent on external powers for its most critical infrastructure.
What Actually Needs to Happen
African governments need policy frameworks that protect data, enable cybersecurity, and prevent vendor lock-in. That sounds boring and technical, but it’s actually the most important work happening right now.
Data Localization: Some data needs to stay in-country, under local control. Not all data, because that’s inefficient and expensive, but critical data. Government data, health records, financial system data. These should be protected by local law, stored locally, accessible by local authorities.
Surveillance Transparency: If a city’s installing 3,000 cameras, there need to be rules about how that footage can be used, who can access it, how long it’s stored. There need to be independent audits. Citizens need the ability to know what they’re being monitored for and have recourse if it’s abused.
Technical Interoperability: Infrastructure needs to be built in ways that don’t lock in a single vendor. Use open standards. Make it possible to switch to different suppliers without replacing everything. This prevents the kind of dependency we’ve been talking about.
Cybersecurity Requirements: Before deploying critical infrastructure, have independent security reviews. Make sure there are no backdoors, no hidden vulnerabilities, no ways for foreign governments to access systems. This costs money and time, but it’s worth it.
Technology Transfer: When African countries invest in infrastructure, they should negotiate for technology transfer. Train local people to build and maintain these systems. Develop local capacity instead of remaining dependent on foreign experts.
These aren’t anti-China policies. They’re just smart policies that would protect African interests against any foreign power.
The Real Choice
The choice isn’t “Chinese technology or nothing.” The choice is whether Africa becomes a producer of technology or just a consumer. Whether Africa controls its own digital future or outsources it. Whether African data and infrastructure are African assets or just raw material extracted by foreign companies.
The window for making this choice is closing. Every day, more infrastructure gets built, more dependencies get established, more leverage gets built in. In five years, it might be too late. In ten years, it’ll definitely be too late.
Partnership or Dependence?
China’s digital footprint in Africa is real. The infrastructure’s being built. The data’s being collected. The relationships are being established. It’s not some future threat; it’s happening now.
Some of it’s genuinely good. People have internet access. They have financial services. Government’s more efficient. That’s real.
But some of it’s genuinely worrying. Surveillance systems without oversight. Data stored in servers owned by foreign companies. Critical infrastructure financed through debt that creates political leverage. That’s real too.
The honest truth is that this is going to go both ways. Africa will benefit from Chinese investment. The continent will also become more dependent on Chinese technology and Chinese capital. The question is whether African governments can set up frameworks to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks.
The answer requires leaders who think long-term instead of just solving immediate problems. It requires regulations written by people who understand technology. It requires saying no sometimes, even when money’s on the table. It requires building local capacity so that China isn’t the only option.
None of that’s happening automatically. It only happens if African governments make it happen.
So the real question isn’t what China’s doing in Africa. China’s doing what makes sense for China. The real question is: what are African countries going to do about it?
Will Africa’s digital transformation be powered by genuine partnership, or shaped by dependence?
That’s not Beijing’s choice. That’s Africa’s choice. And they need to make it fast.
