African citizens are increasingly being surveilled, profiled, and targeted
online in ways that violate their rights. African governments frequently use
pandemic or terrorism-related security risks to grant themselves additional
surveillance rights and significantly increase their collection of monitoring
apparatus and technologies while spending billions of dollars to conduct
surveillance (Roberts et al. 2023). Surveillance is a prominent strategy African
governments use to limit civic space (Roberts and Mohamed Ali 2021). Digital
technologies are not the root of surveillance in Africa because surveillance
practices predate the digital age (Munoriyarwa and Mare 2023). Surveillance
practices were first used by colonial governments, continued by post-colonial
governments, and are currently being digitalized and accelerated by African
countries. Throughout history, surveillance has been passed down from
colonizers to liberators, and some African leaders have now automated it
(Roberts et al. 2023).
Many studies have been conducted on illegal state surveillance in the United
States, China, and Europe (Feldstein 2019; Feldstein 2021). Less is known
about the supply of surveillance technologies to Africa. With a population
of almost 1.5 billion people, Africa is a continent where many citizens face
surveillance with malicious intent. As mentioned in previous chapters,
documenting the dimensions and drivers of digital surveillance in Africa is