Is Chinese influence in Uganda disrupting legal, digital spaces? (2024)

A few months before the 2021 general elections, police arrested presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, on allegations of breaching Covid-19 guidelines during a rally in Luuka district.

News of his arrest sparked protests in several urban centers across the country which saw uniformed and plain-clothes security operatives unleash wanton violence on civilians, leading to the deaths of several people, whose specific number remains a subject of speculation to date.

Numerous others remain maimed with life-long disabilities. From then on, civilians and activists have since adopted and adapted to new forms and forums of protest from physical to largely digital spaces where they hold public officials to account. Digital spaces have quickly proven to have transformative power of exposure and mobilization, especially among the youth.

The Covid-19 lockdown also partly inspired digital activism. New civil society organizations such as Agora Discourse and Public Square have emerged to use X (formerly Twitter) to facilitate critical dialogues in an effort to expand the frontiers of human rights and democratic governance in Uganda.

However, government has not rested either. It has not only invented deleterious laws to limit freedom of expression on digital platforms, but also leveraged on Chinese technological capabilities to control digital democracy in Uganda. According to Jacob Kiguli, a human rights activist, China has strategically positioned itself as a “no-strings- attached” development partner for Uganda.

“This mutually beneficial diplomatic posture has enabled it to penetrate Africa’s digital space by providing the government with ICT systems to surveil citizens, even more especially on human-rights activists and political opponents,” he says.

‘DIGITAL VILLAGES’ IN UGANDA

On July 09, 2024, President Museveni met Gao Hover, the president of Huawei in sub-Saharan Africa during the cabinet retreat at the National Leadership Institute (NALI) in Kyankwanzi. Huawei, China’s worldwide ICT infrastructure provider and telecommunications equipment manufacturer, offered to help the Ugandan government set up a digital village prototype in Butaleja district to facilitate the uptake of ICT in rural areas, especially in education and business processes.

Kiguli says such an offer is typically cut out of the guidebook of how China operates.

“Projects that threaten people’s privacy and expose them to digital surveillance always come shrouded in generous offers, promising to improve the well-being of its targets,” he says.

HOW DIGITAL VILLAGES FUNCTION IN CHINA

As exciting as the idea of a digital village might read on a Chinese government website, there are allegedly nefarious intentions often behind them, such as data exploitation and control. Information on the internet shows that digital villages like Xiong’an New Area, the collection of vast amounts of data on residents for smart city management could be abused by the Chinese government.

Residents of this village never get told the scope of personal data collected from them through various sensors and devices. Neither do they know the ultimate purposes for which their data is used, beyond what they consented to. Their data could be sold to third parties or be used to manipulate public opinion and behavior.

Digital villages in China also often have internet access controlled by the state. In places like Yunqi Cloud Town, while there is significant technological advancement, internet content is heavily censored, which restricts access to information and limits freedom of speech. Residents only have access to government-approved information, affecting their ability to make informed decisions and participate fully in civic life.

Therefore, behind the glittering promise that digital villages which Hover wants to introduce to Uganda will become hubs of innovation or create smart agriculture, lies many dangers to democracy as explicated by the underlying negative capabilities they carry.

BUTALEJA, A PRECURSOR TO CHINA’S SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM?

Butaleja is a popular destination for Chinese social experiments in Uganda. Dubbed as Uganda’s rice hub, the district received Shs 7 billion worth of agricultural equipment in 2023 from China, including 11 tractors, 11 combine harvesters, three maize threshers, three rice milling systems, transformers and standby generators.

It is intriguing that almost a year after that, Hover offers to set up a model digital village in the same district. Critics claim Butaleja is now a prototype, which could be expanded and replicated in other parts of Uganda.

“The ultimate goal behind digital villages like the one planned for Butaleja is the creation of a social credit system, akin to the one in China,” says Michael Wandera, a social critic.

Whereas China is still testing the system, it already works in some places, including rural areas, and can negatively impact villagers as well.

“China uses this system to track social behavior and economic activity, and finally assign scores that can affect access to social services and opportunities. A low social credit score can lead to penalties, such as restricted access to loans, jobs and even travel. By this, China effectively controls and modifies behavior through digital means,” he adds.

PREVIOUS FOOTPRINTS IN UGANDA

Huawei technicians have been reported to help intelligence officers in Uganda to spy on government critics and political opponents. Added to this is the $126 million worth of Closed-Circuit Television Camera (CCTV) surveillance technology which the same company sold to Ugandan police in 2019 to mitigate the high crime rates, especially in urban centers.

Whereas these cameras have a limited record of performance, they have facial- identification capabilities that are said to be exploited for mass surveillance. Government aims to install a total of 5,552 cameras across urban centers, border points, and highways. The most recent data shows that approximately 3,233 cameras were planned for Kampala alone, but only 2,547 have already been installed and connected to 107 monitoring centers at different police stations.

By press time, Huawei had not responded to the queries via email.

INFLUENCE OVER UGANDA’S LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

As China’s domestic reach and grasp on Uganda becomes tighter, it has influenced the government to increasingly borrow from Beijing’s best practices to control society by applying laws related to freedom of expression and access to information.

Uganda enacted the Computer Misuse Act to address cybercrimes such as unauthorized access, hacking, and the spread of malicious software. However, the law was couched in broad and vague language, and it has previously been used to target political opponents, journalists and activists.

This is not different from China’s cybersecurity law which grants the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) extensive control over the internet and digital communications. Under this law, the CCP requires Chinese companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Star Times to store data locally and provide access to authorities upon request. This makes it easy to censor online content and monitor citizens’ activities.

“This practice is one the Ugandan regime is on the course of following, to the abuse of our Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019,” reasons Kiguli.

“China’s law requiring its companies to store data locally also undermines Uganda’s Data Protection and Privacy Act because the Act applies to the processing of personal data by both public and private entities in Uganda, including data collected, stored, or processed within the country. As such, the prerogative that the Chinese government has over Chinese companies renders Ugandan data subject helpless in case their data is abused from where it’s stored, in China.”

He adds that Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is also becoming highly influenced by the malignant strategies exercised by China’s Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) to censor and control public information. One such strategy is the shutdown and throttling of internet services during the electoral season or whenever the government feels politically threatened by public opinion on social media and other digital spaces.

The wide powers used to do this are often inferred from the broad and vague Section 5 (1) (b) of the UCC Act (as amended) which empowers the Commission to monitor, inspect, license, supervise, control and regulate communications services. Therefore, it is difficult to establish the full picture of Chinese influence over Uganda’s digital democratic space.

The author is a lawyer and journalist