In June 2025, Uganda switched on the Automated Express Penalty System (EPSAuto), using CCTV cameras, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), and an intelligent transport monitoring system (ITMS) to fine motorists. But the system, ostensibly aimed at bringing order to the country’s chaotic roads, quickly generated controversy.
Several developments in recent decades made EPSAuto possible. In the early 2000s, Uganda deepened its economic ties with China, which led to the Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE building Uganda’s information and communications technology infrastructure. This enabled a rapid shift towards digital surveillance, with the government deploying thousands of CCTV cameras, ANPR, the ITMS, and facial-recognition software. Uganda’s Huawei-supported safe-city programme, launched in 2018, has since expanded to all major towns and municipalities.
The official rationale for Uganda’s full-throttle embrace of digital-surveillance tools was public safety and counterterrorism. But many worried that the government could repurpose this infrastructure for whatever it deemed necessary. EPSAuto was proof of that, and the public backlash to the system was swift: drivers complained about duplicated and wrongly attributed fines, as well as unintentional violations, owing to missing speed-limit signs. People began to question whether cameras installed for national security should be used to issue traffic tickets. If the government was willing to use these tools for revenue extraction, what would stop it from using them for political censorship?
EPSAuto was suspended within days. More than a year later, on October 6, Ugandan Attorney General Sam Mayanja declared that the 2021 contract with a Russian company for the ITMS, including digital number plates and vehicle tracking, was legally void and unenforceable. The experience points to a bigger question confronting countries in Africa and elsewhere: what happens when the technologies introduced to make cities safer also make it easier for the government to identify and track its citizens?
A recent report that I co-edited, Smart City Surveillance in Africa: Mapping Chinese AI Surveillance Across 11 Countries, considers this question. Our research identified more than $2 billion in spending on the surveillance of public spaces in Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, although the real amount is likely much higher. And much of this financing came from Chinese companies.
Policymakers tend to trot out public security as the justification for surveillance systems, and they do have a legitimate role to play in the fight against terrorism and crime. But any such use must be lawful, necessary, and proportionate. Moreover, it is incumbent on governments to show that the systems deliver the promised outcomes.
Our research finds no compelling evidence of smart-city surveillance reducing terrorism or serious crime in Africa. Senegal and Zambia have invested heavily in these systems despite facing relatively few security threats. In Mozambique, the technology — which, tellingly, is concentrated in opposition strongholds — has not improved the authorities’ response to serious crimes like kidnappings. Similarly, in Nigeria, heavy spending on surveillance has done little to stem insecurity.
This raises the problem of “function creep.” As the uproar around Uganda’s EPSAuto shows, there are concerns — often valid — that smart-city surveillance tools are being used to identify and monitor activists, opposition figures, critics, and protesters. We documented the same unease in Zimbabwe.
AI-enabled facial recognition is particularly worrying. Once cameras can identify people rather than simply record incidents, surveillance becomes more than a tool for investigating crime after the fact. It can enable authorities to track where people go, who they meet, and which public activities they join. Citizens become highly visible to the state, while the state’s surveillance operations remain opaque. People may not know what data is being collected, how it is used, how long it is retained, or with whom it is shared.
Even the threat of surveillance can have a chilling effect, because people often change their behaviour if there is the possibility of being watched. In many of the countries we studied, citizens reported self-censorship of political expression. Activists, journalists, and opposition figures described altering travel routes, communication practices, and patterns of assembly in response to smart-city surveillance tools whose full capabilities remain unknown. This is true not only in more countries like Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, but also in Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia, which have more democratic institutions.
Thus, surveillance in Africa has become part of a wider set of tools that can weaken individual rights and democratic participation. Such intrusive monitoring is reinforced by restrictions on online expression, internet shutdowns, and platform controls. Taken together, these measures make it harder for people to speak freely, organise, access information, and participate in public life.
Surveillance in Africa is hardly new. Colonial governments used identification systems to control movement and labour. Kenya’s kipande system, for example, required African men to carry identification documents containing personal and employment details, often including fingerprints. Many post-independence governments retained centralised security institutions and continued to use surveillance against political opponents.
Today’s systems can serve similar purposes — preserving the ruling regime’s interests — but they operate on a different scale. These automated digital tools cover much larger areas than human informant networks ever could. Worse, governments can now combine surveillance footage with the wider digital systems they use to collect and process information, ranging from identity and telecommunications data to vehicle records. The ability to monitor people can extend far beyond what any single system appears designed to do. A person does not need to be suspected of a crime to become part of the system’s field of vision. @Project Syndicate, 2026
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