Chinese big tech companies are using Zimbabwe as a large research laboratory to develop facial recognition that will help them identify and track black people, The Financial Times reported Monday.
ZTE and other Chinese tech behemoths are shaping the United Nations’s architectural standards for facial recognition technology, according to leaked documents FT obtained. The standard will reportedly help China’s tech industry open up new markets in the Middle East and Africa.
China’s tech titans are proposing new standards inside the United Nations’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for facial recognition, video monitoring, and vehicle surveillance, among other cutting edge tech developments.
Such standards are often accepted by Africa and other developing nations that lack resources, experts say.
“African states tend to go along with what is being put forward by China and the ITU as they don’t have the resources to develop standards themselves,” Richard Wingfield, head of legal at Global Partners Digital, told reporters.
