Many Chinese tech companies continue to export their facial recognition technologies into Africa markets while supporting domestic surveillance practices that include Uyghur and ethnic minority detection. Facial recognition technology, once framed as a potential ameliorant to social challenges like crime, is now widely criticized for racial bias and the risks the technology poses to privacy and civil liberties. These risks and more are clearly present in China’s current testing and expansion of facial recognition systems in Africa. The technology’s arrival in African countries like Zimbabwe is a mark of China’s growing geopolitical footprint and Chinese corporate expansion.
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