China has dismissed reports it bugged the African Union (AU) headquarters as “preposterous”, describing the claim made by France’s Le Monde as “very difficult to understand”, according to Kuang Weilin, the Chinese Ambassador to the AU.
The article published on Le Monde said the discovery resulted in all the AU servers being switched.
Le Monde said it spoke to a number of anonymous sources, who claimed the alleged transfer was taking place late at night and was only spotted in January 2017 due to the spike in activity between midnight and 02:00 A.M, despite no one being in the building.
It was suggested that the alleged data transfer had been taking place since 2012, when the building, in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, was opened.
Officials also brought in security experts from Algeria to sweep the entire headquarters for potential bugs, the newspaper said, leading to the discovery of microphones in desks.
However, Mr Kuang who hailed the headquarters as a “monument” to his country’s relationship with the continent said it was entirely untrue.
“I really question its intention. I think it will undermine and send a very negative message to people. I think it is not good for the image of the newspaper itself.
“Certainly, it will create problems for China-Africa relations.”
Not the first time
Following a joint investigation by Le Monde and The Intercept, documents reportedly extracted from the archives of the former consultant of the US National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden, reveals that British intelligence agencies (GCHQ) have not spared the AU from interference.
Between 2009 and 2010, several officials’ calls and e-mails were reportedly intercepted, such as Boubou Niang, then special advisor to the UN and AU mediator in Darfur, Sudan.
During the July 2017 AU summit, new security measures were reportedly taken with specialists from Algeria and Ethiopian cyber-security experts inspecting rooms flushing out microphones placed under the desks and walls.
“It has lasted too long, following this discovery, we thanked, without making scandal, the Chinese engineers present at our headquarters in Addis Ababa to manage our systems. We have taken some steps to strengthen our cyber-security, a concept that is not yet in the hands of civil servants and heads of state. We remain very exposed. “said a senior AU member.
However, the AU has acquired its own servers and declined China’s offer to configure them.
Several institutions including European institutions are allegedly being spied upon by various bodies including the GCHQ in London.
What has the AU said about it?
Reacting to the report, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who assumed the African Union chairmanship this year, said he did not know anything about it.
“But, in any case, I don’t think there is anything done here that we would not like people to know.
“I don’t think spying is the speciality of the Chinese. We have spies all over the place in this world, but I will not have been worried about being spied on in this building,” Kagame said.
His only concern, he said, was that the AU should have built its own headquarters, instead of China. “I would only have wished that in Africa we had got our act together earlier on. We should have been able to build our own building.”
AU Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, played down the allegations, saying he had seen “no evidence of espionage in the building,” a sentiment shared by at least one African leader.
“There is nothing to be spied. I don’t believe it,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said.
