Even as Europeans and Asians join Trump’s ban, the Chinese company continues to prosper from the continent’s move toward 5G.

By Loni Prinsloo

A year ago in June, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa got a letter that painted an alarming picture of his country’s economic prospects. The leaders of the country’s four largest telecommunications companies wrote that South Africa risked “unintended and harmful consequences” from President Trump’s plans to bar Chinese network equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co. from doing business with U.S. companies. The leaders implored Ramaphosa to undertake an “urgent intervention” to avoid damaging fallout to South Africa and the rest of continent.

Ramaphosa soon threw his weight behind the request and defended Huawei, calling it a victim of the U.S. trade war with China. “We support a company that is going to take our country, and indeed the world, to better technologies, and that is 5G,” he said at an economics summit. “We cannot afford to have our economy to be held back because of this fight.”

Kenya, Ethiopia, and other countries across the region have followed Ramaphosa’s example, and Huawei hasn’t lost a single order in Africa, where the company has been operating for more than two decades and has become a central pillar of the continent’s growth ambitions.

Excerpt

As the 5G buildout begins, U.S. government officials warn that Huawei could use its growing share of the telecommunications equipment market to spy for China, though Huawei denies any spying or even talking with the Chinese government, let alone acting on its behalf. Executives insist it’s a private company, owned by employees, not the state. But in Africa, too, there have been allegations of improper behavior.

In Uganda, government officials worked with Huawei technicians to infiltrate the WhatsApp messages of a political opponent, according to the Wall Street Journal, a report the country’s government and Huawei deny. Similar allegations of intelligence gathering have surfaced in Zambia and Algeria. Huawei has denied that spying took place.

Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-19/china-s-huawei-prospers-in-africa-even-as-europe-asia-join-trump-s-ban?utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter

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04 Aug 2020

By David Wagman

Optimists look to the future of Eskom, South Africa’s electric utility, and see a glass half full. Pessimists see a glass nearly empty.

The optimists look to what they say is a rare opportunity for a national utility to fully embrace renewable energy resources. In so doing, the power provider could decarbonize its fleet of electric generating plants as well as Africa’s largest economy. Tens of thousands of green energy jobs could be created and gigawatts of renewable generating resources could be added each year for the next 10 or 20 years.

The pessimists—some might call them realists—point to a utility buckling under a massive debt load, singed by a legacy of government cronyism, disappointed by the performance problems of two of the world’s newest and biggest coal-fired power plants, and swamped beneath a backlog of deferred maintenance projects.

Read more at: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/south-africas-lights-flicker-as-its-electric-utility-ponders-a-future-without-carbon

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Researchers say bigger issues — poverty, corruption, inequality — can undermine rural energy programs if unaddressed.

By Maria Gallucci

In Zimbabwe, where access to the electrical grid is sparse and unreliable, millions of people still burn wood to cook food and heat their homes. The practice is partly to blame for worsening deforestation in the landlocked country. In recent years, government officials have proposed a seemingly straightforward solution: Extend the electric grid into rural villages, and reduce the use of wood for fuel.

But Ellen Fungisai Chipango, a Zimbabwe-born researcher, says that rural electrification isn’t likely to provide any quick fixes. That’s because adding poles, wires, and even off-grid solar systems will do little to alleviate the crushing poverty that leads people to cut large swaths of trees. In her field work, she found that initiatives to expand energy access in Zimbabwe often overlook the larger political and economic forces at play.

Chipango is among researchers worldwide who are closely examining long-held assumptions that electrifying rural homes can boost family incomes, help children study, reduce indoor air pollution, or protect the environment. Stakeholders including scrappy solar startups, major oil and gas companies, and the United Nations have all pledged to work toward improving energy access for one or more of those reasons. But recent studies suggest that, in order to deliver real benefits, programs must be more comprehensive.

Read more at: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/zimbabwe-hopes-rural-electrification-stop-deforestation-it-might-not-work

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•In 2012 (Huawei), along with ZTE, was found guilty of bribery in Algeria and fined $39,000 and excluded from public contracts for two years. Local French language news site Presse-DZ reported that international arrest warrants had been issued for ZTE’s Dong Tao and Chen Zhibo and Huawei’s Xiao Chunfa. A fine of three million dinars (£25,117) each was also levied and the firms were banned from public tenders for two years as punishment for “corruption and influence peddling”.

•The three were charged as part of a wider corruption scandal involving former Algérie Télécom exec Mohamed Boukhari, and businessman Chami Madjdoub who were given a sentence of 18 years in jail and fined five million dinars after receiving suspicious payments and money laundering between 2003-6. The report alleges that the ZTE and Huawei execs effectively bribed Boukhari by paying $10m (£6.5m) into offshore accounts set up by Madjdoub. The Shenzhen headquartered telecoms kit makers both expressed concern at the news.

•In Zambia, it was probed over allegations of bribery involving a multi-million-dollar contract to build cell towers in rural areas.

•In the Solomon Islands, it was accused of offering millions of dollars to the ruling party in exchange for an undersea fiber optic cable contract. In all three cases – and half a dozen others in recent years – the alleged perpetrator was Huawei.

•In Ghana, Huawei has confronted accusations of illegally funding the ruling party, a charge Huawei and other Chinese companies have faced in other countries. In 2012, an opposition group disclosed what it claimed was evidence that Huawei had made illegal campaign contributions to the ruling National Democratic Congress in exchange for a $43 million tax exemption. Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) produced invoices and other documents showing the Chinese telecom company had paid for millions of dollars worth of campaign paraphernalia for the ruling party’s 2012 election campaign. In return, the group alleged, the government awarded “one of the juiciest contracts to be doled out by the government” – a $150 million contract to build an e-government platform. Huawei and the government denied the charges.

In the last 12 years, Huawei and its smaller Chinese rival ZTE have been “investigated or found guilty of corruption” in as many as 21 countries, according to Andy Keiser, a former House Intelligence Committee professional staffer.

The ZTE Corporation recently launched its first 5G Wireless Router, ZTE 5G Indoor CPE MC801A, in South Africa in collaboration with MTN. Rain, one of the 5G providers in South Africa also markets a 5G Huawei Router.

ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. As with Huawei, the company has faced criticism in the United States over potential ties to the Chinese government that could enable surveillance. In June 2020, the Federal Communications Commission designated ZTE a national security threat, thereby barring it from any U.S. subsidies. It was disclosed that the United States Department of Justice opened an investigation into ZTE for potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei was once an engineer in the People’s Liberation Army and is also a member of the Communist Party. And then there are the Chinese rules: According to a new cybersecurity law that came into force in summer 2017, in certain cases Chinese companies are obliged to pass on information acquired abroad to the state. What “certain cases” means is vague.

https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/bribery-corruption-charges-follow-huawei-around-world

https://www.dw.com/en/sierens-china-worlds-telecoms-giants-warrant-general-suspicion/a-47420421

The gift that kept on giving

In 2006, Beijing pledged $200m to build the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. Everything was custom-built by the Chinese – including a state-of-the-art computer system. Huawei servers sent sensitive data back to China every evening for five years. All allegations were denied.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Huawei

Fast forward to July 20, 2020:

Huawei equips Cameroon government data center, helps Rain’s South Africa 5G project.

A Tier III (Design) data center has been built in Cameroon by a Chinese consortium that includes Huawei.

The $15m Camtel NBN II, also called the Zamengoe data center, is a 3,000 sq m (32,000 sq ft) facility on the outskirts of Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. It was funded with a loan from the Chinese government. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/huawei-equips-cameroon-govt-data-center-helps-rains-south-africa-5g-project

Al Jazeera Investigations

On the 15th of July 2020, Aljazeera broke the news of corruption allegations concerning 5G and Huawei in Namibia. A Windhoek city councillor alleged that she was offered money by a local politician to drop objections against tentative 5G deal. The Anti-Corruption Commission of the Republic of Namibia is investigating the case.

The post Corruption Allegations Part 1 appeared first on EMFSA.

The Mobile Phone Whistleblower Project – an initiative of Whistleblowing International – is calling on citizens – especially current and former employees of Motorola and other mobile phone and communications companies – to report information about fraud, deception, corruption or other misconduct within the industry.

Read more at:

Group Calls on Citizens to Blow the Whistle on Motorola Cell Phone Safety Studies

The post Group Calls on Citizens to Blow the Whistle on Motorola Cell Phone Safety Studies appeared first on EMFSA.

https://www.mobile-phone-whistleblowing.org/

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