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How Huawei is winning over the global south
Nations like Indonesia, Nigeria and the Solomon Islands are eager to upgrade their networks - no matter the potential cybersecurity risks.By Greg Noone
December 22, 2022
The logic behind the expansion of telecoms networks is cold and remorseless. Turning a profit from such networks requires the provider to find users, most of which reside in cities. These networks are at their most sophisticated in places where demand for complex services is at its highest: financial hubs, for example, like London and New York. Conversely, telecoms companies are reluctant to route fibre optic out into the sticks, where nobody lives and demand never rises beyond a local hunger for reliable broadband.
Unless that is, you’re Huawei. One of China’s largest telecoms companies, the firm made its name in the early 2000s as the provider that would venture deep into the countryside to hook up villages and towns with next-gen networking capabilities, usually at a lower price point than its nearest competitors. This was thanks, in large part, to generous subsidies from Chinese state banks, and applied to entire countries across the global south that were otherwise excluded from the mainstream of telecommunications: places like Uganda, for example, where Huawei has made major contributions toward building the country’s ICT infrastructure since 2006. Such efforts argue foreign policy experts, help to win over new backers for China’s campaign to reshape global digital governance norms as part of its Digital Silk Road project.
Huawei does not have as many friends in the West. After murmurs from US and UK intelligence agencies in the early 2010s that the company’s involvement in their networks constituted a cybersecurity risk – thanks in part to provisions in China’s National Intelligence Law, which compels tech companies to hand over any data to the state deemed relevant to national security – the telco became a victim of the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing, with the former campaigning hard against Huawei’s involvement in upgrading Western networks to 5G. Most recently, that animus has extended to the UK ripping out much of the company’s kit from its 5G networks and the US banning the importation and sale of any equipment from Huawei.
Ironically, many of the cyber incidents involving Huawei products have taken place in the global south. That includes CCTV footage being syphoned from the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia, as well as accusations aired in the Wall Street Journal that the telco aided and abetted efforts by the Algerian, Zambian and Ugandan governments to spy on political dissidents. Huawei denied any involvement in these incidents, and its reputation in the global south remains stronger than ever, in part because many emerging markets see the company as an essential partner in spurring the development of their digital economies, and also because of a pervasive belief that they are just as vulnerable to spying from Western technology firms. That overlooks an essential difference between the two, argues Bryce C. Barros.
“Facebook is not acting 100% in accordance with the American government,” says Barros, China affairs analyst at the German Marshall Fund think tank. “They do have disagreements from time-to-time about things like privacy, data protection, content moderation. You won’t find that disagreement as much in places in the global south when you’re dealing with Chinese tech companies.”
A Huawei advertisement in Kampala, Uganda. Present in the country since 2006, the Chinese telecoms giant has worked closely with the Ugandan government to upgrade its mobile and broadband infrastructure. (Picture courtesy of Jose_Matheus / Shutterstock)
Huawei’s global south ambitions
Founded in 1987 in an apartment in Shenzhen, Huawei initially struggled to make a name for itself in China’s nascent telecoms industry. “We didn’t receive a single penny from the government,” its founder, Ren Zhengfei, told the makers of a promotional film about his company’s early days – an allusion, perhaps, to the intense competition Huawei faced from the collection of state-backed firms which dominated Chinese telecoms at the time.That changed in 2002. Realising that the company could not compete effectively against China’s telecoms giants for contracts in the country’s urban centres, Huawei pivoted abroad, marketing its expertise to emerging economies yet to be hooked up to efficient telecommunication networks. The firm’s success in these two spheres convinced the China Development Bank to extend it the first of many generous lines of credit. This was a turning point for Huawei, argues Henry Tugendhat, a senior policy analyst with the United States Institute for Peace.
“Despite its narrative and mythology of being the one, lone private sector actor, it did sort of come into the fold of getting a lot of state support like the state-owned enterprises before it,” says Tugendhat.
How Huawei is winning over the global south - Tech Monitor
Nations like Indonesia, Nigeria and the Solomon Islands are eager to upgrade their networks - no matter the potential cybersecurity risks.
techmonitor.ai
to the most remote village in Guinea. Huawei employees help setup a very advance BUT very simple internet tower. At 20mins just look at the villagers smiling away when for the first time they can use their cellphone.
