Overview:
In one notable case from 2018, the report claims that Huawei-assisted hacking enabled the state to access the WhatsApp and Skype accounts of opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, which led to mass arrests both before and after the 2021 general elections.
Africa’s so-called “smart city” initiatives, presented to the public as tools for combating crime, are allegedly serving a far more sinister purpose, widespread digital surveillance of citizens, journalists and political opponents.
A new report by Unwanted Witness, a civil society organization (CSO), claims that while governments in countries like Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Zimbabwe tout these expensive projects as vital for public safety, their true intention is to monitor and control their populations.
The justification for these multi-million-dollar installations including CCTV, facial recognition, digital licence plates and biometric databases was crime prevention, but the reality, according to the report, is a hidden agenda of surveillance, targeting specific individuals and groups.
Dubbed “Surveillance/Spyware: An Impediment to Civil Society, HRDs and Journalists in East & Southern Africa”, the report highlights how a global spyware market, estimated at $12 billion, is exploiting weak regulations across the continent.
Foreign firms, primarily from China and Israel, are reportedly offering sophisticated surveillance tools to sub-Saharan African governments. These include hacking systems like Pegasus, Circles, and Remote Control System (RCS), which can infiltrate devices, monitor communications, and track location data with zero-click exploits that require no user interaction.
“SMART CITIES” OR SPY CITIES?
The report finds that “smart city” projects, which integrate technologies like CCTV and license plate recognition, are being used to spy on specific individuals with little to no oversight.
This practice is a direct infringement on the right to privacy, a fundamental human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Uganda’s Huawei Safe City Project in Kampala is a prime example. The $126 million initiative installed 1,800 CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, all linked to a national police command center.
The report states that deliberately vague national laws on national security and terrorism are being used to justify this constant surveillance, particularly targeting human rights defenders, journalists and opposition voices.
In one notable case from 2018, the report claims that Huawei-assisted hacking enabled the state to access the WhatsApp and Skype accounts of opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, which led to mass arrests both before and after the 2021 general elections.
The report suggests that the Huawei infrastructure and spyware work in tandem, CCTV footage is used to track an individual’s movements, and then spyware is deployed to hack their devices, leading to physical arrests or worse, human rights violations.
A REGIONAL PROBLEM
The issue is not confined to Uganda. The report documents similar patterns in several other countries. In Rwanda, the government uses its own laws to justify surveillance that extends beyond its borders.
The report alleges that the Rwandan government, in partnership with firms like Huawei and NSO Group (makers of Pegasus), has used “Smart City” initiatives to cover 55% of Kigali with CCTV networks and to target over 3,500 phone numbers, including those of dissidents and journalists in exile.
It even claims that Pegasus was used to infest the mobile phone of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during the recent period of political tension over military deployment in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Not even Kenya, often regarded as the region’s most democratic has been spared.
The country’s “Safe City” project, also in partnership with Huawei, deployed 2,000 CCTV cameras in Nairobi and Mombasa. Despite claims of crime reduction, the report notes that crime rates actually increased after its implementation.
The report points to the use of spyware like Pegasus, deployed to target journalists and opposition figures, especially during election cycles. Zimbabwe’s $60 billion Zim Cyber City project, developed with Chinese firms like Hikvision and CloudWalk Technology, is set to create a smart city with extensive surveillance capabilities.
The report reveals that technology from the company Circles has been operational since 2013, used to intercept communications and track individuals like journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and opposition leader Jacob Ngarivhume.
The Ethiopian government is heavily reliant on Chinese tech companies ZTE and Huawei for surveillance. The report notes the use of commercial spyware like FinFisher and Hacking Team to target activists and diaspora communities.
Mass internet shutdowns and social media blocks during protests are also common tactics used to control narratives and hinder mobilization. The report identifies Malawi as a notable outlier which had for long resisted to deploy digital surveillance on its citizens, but one that is beginning to fall into the same trap.
In early 2025, the country announced a $1.5 million investment in a social media monitoring system, sparking public outcry. While there’s no confirmed evidence of advanced spyware like Pegasus, incidents of telecom-based monitoring are on the rise.
LACK OF LEGAL SAFEGUARDS
Across all the countries examined, the report found a common thread: a lack of adequate legal frameworks and oversight to protect citizens from government overreach.
Laws are often vaguely worded to allow for broad interpretations of “national security” or “terrorism,” giving security agencies sweeping powers to conduct surveillance without judicial review.
Even where data protection laws exist, they often contain explicit exemptions for national security, rendering them ineffective in a surveillance state.
The report concludes that these surveillance projects, while presented as essential for security, primarily serve as tools for political control, undermining democratic freedoms and civic participation.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Frank Kisakye
Dieser Artikel ist neu veröffentlicht von / This article is republished from: The Observer, 13.08.2025
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