(Ecofin Agency) - The report highlights Nigeria as the biggest spender on surveillance technologies in Africa. Over the past decade, the country has expended over $2.7 billion to acquire surveillance equipment.

The British think tank Institute of Development Studies (IDS) conducted a study on the acquisition and deployment of surveillance technologies in Africa, with a particular focus on certain governments. The findings are presented in a report titled "Mapping the Supply of Surveillance Technologies to Africa: Case Studies from Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi, and Zambia." The study is based on five of the most critical types of surveillance technology: internet interception, mobile interception, social media surveillance, 'safe city' technologies for monitoring public spaces, and biometric identification technologies.

IDS’ research reveals that Nigeria is the African country that spends the most on monitoring its population. The nation reportedly expends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to acquire technologies for monitoring peaceful activists, opponents, or even journalists. The agreements between Abuja and the providers of these technologies over the past decade (2013-2022) amount to more than $2.7 billion.

In the case of Ghana, the resources are primarily allocated to spyware for monitoring mobile phone activity and the Safe Cities system, which relies on CCTV with facial recognition software. Morocco mainly acquires tools for intercepting telephone communications and Internet data, while Zambia focuses on the Safe Cities system. Nigeria, Ghana, and Zambia have each invested over $350 million in deploying CCTV, developed by the Chinese groups Huawei and ZTE, for public spaces.

The main companies supplying surveillance technologies to African governments include Huawei and ZTE (China), BIO-key and Agilis (USA), Hacking Team (Italy), Thales (France), BAE Systems (UK), Dermalog (Germany), and NSO Group, Cyberbit, and Elbit Systems (Israel). These companies claim that illegal surveillance constitutes a breach of their general terms and conditions of sale. Some even claim to conduct human rights assessments of their customers. However, none of these measures has prevented the rapid expansion of surveillance practices that violate citizens' rights to privacy and anonymity, as well as infringing on freedoms of expression and association.

The report highlights that each country supplier dominates a particular segment. For example, China dominates the supply of public space surveillance technologies in the form of surveillance cameras equipped with AI-powered facial recognition and car license plate recognition tools. Chinese state-owned banks have provided loans to African governments to finance Huawei and ZTE's installation of thousands of CCTV cameras, data analysis centers, and control rooms to monitor citizens in public spaces in real-time.

The U.S. and the UK have the upper hand in providing social media monitoring tools and "political marketing" consultancy services to manipulate public opinion and voter behavior. Germany, Italy, and Israel are the main exporters of mobile phone hacking malware, while the UK primarily exports fake mobile phone towers (IMSI-International Mobile Subscriber Identity-catchers) to spy on mobile phone users. Currently, Russia remains a minor supplier of mass surveillance technologies to Africa.