In late 2023, a Nigerian civil-society coalition flagged a little-noticed procurement deal: a new CCTV and facial-recognition system intended for urban security, with foreign vendors supplying the core AI modules. While publicly packaged as an anti-crime infrastructure upgrade, leaked contract fragments and investigative reporting suggest a deeper and more troubling narrative, that surveillance AI is being sold not only as governance tools but as instruments of control, with private firms and middlemen capturing value, often at the expense of civil liberties.
Across Africa, Chinese, Israeli, and Western technology companies are aggressively expanding into this market. They offer “smart city” packages, biometric monitoring systems, predictive policing tools, and data-analytics platforms often bundled with infrastructure or security deals. These contracts, poorly disclosed and lightly regulated, enable governments to surveil citizens, track dissent, and silence critics.
This investigation traces the money and influence behind Africa’s surveillance boom, exposing how rights are commodified, and how the profit motives behind private vendors often overshadow human rights concerns.
The surveillance market is booming — and opaque
Growth and scale
Market analysis shows that in 2025, the Middle East & Africa video surveillance market is expected to reach USD 4.57 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 5.8% from 2025 to 2030. This growth includes hardware, software (video analytics, management) and services (VSaaS) segments — all of which are integral to AI-enabled surveillance ecosystems.
Who is supplying surveillance tech to Africa
A key resource is the report “Mapping the supply of surveillance technologies to Africa”, which documents how governments in Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi, and Zambia annually spend at least USD $1 billion on digital surveillance technology contracts from vendors in the U.S., U.K., China, EU, and Israel. The report identifies Nigeria as the largest known customer, with at least USD $2.7 billion in recorded contracts.
In that mapping, the authors observed:
- Chinese firms are dominant in public-space or “safe city” surveillance systems.
- Western firms (U.S./UK) are heavily involved in social media monitoring, “political marketing” consultancies, and data-analytics.
- EU / Israeli exporters supply mobile phone hacking and spyware technologies.
- Many sales are wrapped in infrastructure or dual-use contracts, making it hard to identify the true cost or scope of surveillance components.
Thus, the supply side of surveillance is global, with dense layers of export, subcontracting, and bundling.
Case study: Huawei in Uganda — concrete evidence of profit + repression
Uganda is perhaps the most well-documented African example of foreign surveillance deployment under the guise of “safe city” modernization.
- In 2019, Uganda’s police procured a USD 126 million CCTV system from Huawei, intended for Kampala and surrounding districts, complete with facial recognition capabilities.
- Local reporting notes that over 1,800 cameras were installed in Kampala under the project, all linked to a police command center.
- Human Rights Watch flagged that the system enables real-time tracking of every vehicle, with new SIM-card-equipped license plates to facilitate state surveillance via cellular networks.
- Business & human rights reporting revealed that Huawei technicians directly assisted security forces in surveillance operations. In one case, they helped infiltrate a WhatsApp group linked to opposition leader Bobi Wine (as reported by Wall Street Journal).
- Local privacy activists have raised concerns that the equipment and data infrastructure were integrated with other agencies (immigration, revenue, national ID systems), effectively creating a unified surveillance regime.
In sum, Uganda’s deployment illustrates how a large vendor contract can convert into an embedded surveillance regime with broad reach.
The profit chain: Who benefits (and how)
Bundling and infrastructure loans as cover
Surveillance modules are rarely sold as standalone systems. Instead, they’re bundled with larger telecommunications or urban infrastructure contracts for fiber networks, broadband, smart-grid systems, or “safe city” development. This bundling makes it difficult to disaggregate the surveillance costs, and offers vendors entry via infrastructure loans or development funding.
Security aid and capacity funding
Western governments, multinationals, and development agencies often justify funding biometric systems, data analytics platforms, or surveillance capacity building under the rubric of counterterrorism, migration control or urban governance. These funds may wind up in private vendor contracts, especially when governments lack in-house tech capacity.
Intermediaries and local partners
Foreign firms often rely on local consultancies, telecom firms, or politically connected intermediaries to navigate procurement laws, regulatory settings, and client relationships. These local entities may receive significant margins or commissions, inflating overall cost and reducing transparency about the end-use and accountability.
Recurring revenue and lifecycle contracts
Surveillance systems are not static: they need software updates, maintenance, cloud storage, security patches, and expansion. Vendors lock clients into multi-year service contracts, subscription fees, and data management deals, ensuring ongoing revenue long after the initial sale.
Rights implications: How citizens pay the price
Surveillance of dissent
In multiple countries, surveillance systems have been deployed against activists, journalists, or political opponents:
- In Uganda, the Huawei system has been used to track protests, identify participants, and monitor opposition communication channels.
- In Kenya, NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware has been documented in use, with phones targeted without consent — a pattern that recurs across Africa.
- In broader contexts, the mapping report notes that many African governments use social media surveillance and political marketing firms from U.S./UK to influence civic discourse and monitoring.
State license plate tracking and vehicle surveillance
Uganda’s “Intelligent Transport Monitoring System,” introduced in 2023–2024, mandates cellular-connected license-plate devices that feed real-time tracking of all vehicles to police command centers. HRW warns this system erodes privacy, association, and expression rights.
The chilling effect and gendered harm
While comprehensive gendered impact data is scarce, many women’s rights groups warn that surveillance intensifies risks of harassment, doxxing, and targeted online attacks. Women activists in politically sensitive areas — e.g. campaigning against gender-based violence or land rights are especially vulnerable when the state can trace their digital and physical movements.
Self-censorship is also a predictable outcome when civic actors believe they may be watched: journalists, researchers, and community organizers may avoid certain topics or restrict coordination due to fear of surveillance backlash.
Transparency gaps and regulatory failure
- Many procurement contracts are classified under “security” or excluded from public tender disclosures.
- Governments rarely publish vendor names, technical specifications, pricing structures, or data-access protocols.
- Exporting countries often lack binding human-rights due diligence requirements for their surveillance vendors, relying instead on voluntary codes or export controls that are weak or inconsistently enforced.
- Audits and parliamentary oversight rarely penetrate the surveillance domain; in Uganda, parliamentary review of the license-tracking system was reassigned to a classified committee whose report is not public.
Conclusion: A lucrative repression industry
The expansion of surveillance AI in Africa is not a benevolent modernization, it is a profit chain built on opacity, control, and fear. Foreign vendors gain new markets, local intermediaries capture cuts, and governments extend their reach into citizens’ lives. Meanwhile, activists, journalists, and marginalized groups particularly women bear the costs in curtailed privacy, harassment, and fear.
For digital rights to stand a chance, surveillance procurement must be exposed: contracts published, oversight strengthened, human-rights impact assessed, and citizen voices included in the process. Until that happens, rights remain for sale and profit remains unchecked.
