Huawei smart city technologies deployed in Gaborone and Francistown

Huawei smart city technologies deployed in Gaborone and Francistown
Excluded from graph
Deployment Status	Ongoing
Deployment Start Date
Deployment End Date
Events	* uses Record type Property:Has event Start (19 November 2017, Documented, , No description)
City	Francistown (BW), Gaborone
Country	Botswana
Involved Entities
Keywords
Technology Deployed	Safe City Software by Huawei
Information Certainty	Speculative
Primary sources	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Datasets Used	Huawei (Dataset), Unknown Dataset 0131
Deployment Type	Surveillance
runs search software
managed by	Government of Botswana
used by	Botswana Police Service, Huawei
Potentially used by
Information Certainty	0
Summary	In Botswana, Huawei has provided support for two safe city projects. Huawei's Safe Cities are purportedly for the benefit of crime reduction, but often extend to mass surveillance, with a focus on the interoperability of computer vision technologies. So far, cameras have certainly been installed in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and are planned for Francistown, with the ultimate aim of cross-Botswana coverage. The installation process has been mired in political controversy over tendering, with Botswanas Public Procurement and Asset Board disputing the contracts.

Graph View ↗︎

Information Certainty: Speculative

Deployment Purpose: Surveillance

Summary

In Botswana, Huawei has provided support for two safe city projects. Huawei's Safe Cities are purportedly for the benefit of crime reduction, but often extend to mass surveillance, with a focus on the interoperability of computer vision technologies. So far, cameras have certainly been installed in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and are planned for Francistown, with the ultimate aim of cross-Botswana coverage. The installation process has been mired in political controversy over tendering, with Botswanas Public Procurement and Asset Board disputing the contracts.

• Details

Products and Institutions:

Product Deployed	Safe City Software by Huawei
Institutions ⠉
Datasets	Huawei (Dataset) Unknown Dataset 0131
Search software

Status and Events:

Status	Ongoing
Events	Start (19 November 2017, Documented, , No description)
Start Date
End Date

Users:

Involved Entities
Managed by	Government of Botswana
Used by	Huawei Botswana Police Service

Location:

City	Gaborone Francistown (BW)
Country ⠉	Botswana Botswana

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Description

Botswana and Huawei have longstanding cooperation.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi said, he takes Huawei as his first stop during the China visit, this is not a coincident. He said Huawei’s achievements in ICT area is respectable, and Botswana is cooperating with Huawei in innovations, so as to promote digital transformation of Botswana. Yi Xiang said Botswana is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. For many years, Huawei has taken active part in Botswana ICT planning and development, and built wonderful relationships with local operators and enterprises, so as to support building ubiquitos connectivity and ICT sector in Botswana”. President Mokgweetsi Masisi said Botswana wants to improve governance efficiency, socio-economic development, and sustainable development through leverage of ICT, and demonstrate successful cases and experience to the whole world. Therefore, it is natural for Botswana to select Huawei, and we look forward to having more exchanges and interactions with Huawei”. 2

In 2017, it was reported that Huawei were providing safe city technology to Gaborone, with planned developments in Francistown.

Botswana Police Services (BPS) has engaged leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, Huawei for the Safer City Project, which it is envisaged will help it achieve its mandate of ensuring the city, and eventually the country at large, is a safer place to reside or do business in. The BPS has in the recent past weeks undertaken drug busts and sweeps around the city, in a drug purge that is expected to bring down crime statistics in the city which has in recent years been experiencing violent crime and high crimes statistics. Drugs are seen as the underlying factor to rising crime statistics. The Safer City Project was first alluded to by President Khama in his 2016 State of the Nation address saying the programme would police the city by means of closed circuit television. Earlier this week on Tuesday, BPS revealed more information on the project, saying international standards surveillance network will be installed around the capital city. This will include high definition cameras, traffic signals placed along busy roads, and at busy intersections of the highway, intelligence lenses around strategic corporate enclaves of high economic value as well sophisticated software packages and monitoring computers with secured database and other world-class security surveillance gadgets used globally around international premier cities. The Commissioner of Police Mr Keabetswe Makgophe and the Managing Director of Huawei Botswana Mr Ren Fujun this past Tuesday at the Police Head Quarters commissioned the project by signing a two year contract which will ensure the effective implementation and delivery of the expected safe city 6

A researcher, Oarabile Mudongo, has pieced together press releases from Botswana Police and reports from the government to isolate evidence that points toward the use of computer vision and predictive policing.

Some additional functionalities of the surveillance network deployed in Francistown were identified in a separate publication in June 2019. The CCTV network is revealed to be linked through fibre optic network connected to the command centre established at Kutlwano Police Station and satellite surveillance. Gaboletswe Dimeko, BPS Senior Assistant Commissioner, in his interview mentioned that “over 500 cameras inserted with facial recognition features…will be placed in 195 sites around Francistown” (Kebotse, 2019). This would appear to indicate that the government had begun to establish an integrated local data center that would incorporate safety and protection, as well as law enforcement and traffic management. This is likely to have some implications towards how data is classified to organise people and policing activities around prediction and real-time awareness on the ground which might produce flawed outcomes 7

The progression of the development has been mired in political controversy over tendering.

The Public Procurement Asset and Disposal Board (PPADB) has instructed Botswana Police Service (BPS) to cancel a multi-million tender project that it had awarded to Huawei Botswana Technologies through a selective tendering process. According to documents explaining the Board’s decision for the 15th July 2021 sitting, the PPADB also rejected Botswana Police Service’s request to award the same tender to the Chinese company 1

Information reaching Sunday Standard suggests that Botswana Police Services is caught up in some procurement irregularities in which some questionable tendering procedures were flouted. It is almost a month now after Sunday Standard sent a questionnaire to BPS, Hauweii and PPADB. The Botswana Police Services and the company as well as PPADB were given several weeks to clarify some of the controversies surrounding the tender but immediate response to Sunday Standard queries was not available. Botswana Police Service Assistance Public Relations Officer Near Bagali said: “The matter is being handled by high authority and they will respond as soon as they are done.” Huawei Botswana Technologies did not provide timelines as to when it would respond except promising that it would do so. When presenting his committee of supply speech in parliament for the financial year 2020/21 budget, the Minister of Defence, Justice and Security, Kagiso Mmusi had reportedly requested the sum of P77,7million to continue financing the upgrading and expansion of the radio communication system, surveillance systems and the automated fingerprint system; installation of an incident management system for the safer city project; and the roll out of the human resource management system to all police districts systems 1

This page uses the following references:

• Security_Vision_Wiki_References#_SCITEa77904448f3003704cfb7c30baca77bb