In Africa’s first ‘safe city,’ surveillance reigns

Lights, cameras, what action? In Nairobi, the question looms large for millions of Kenyans, whose every move is captured by the flash of a CCTV camera at intersections across the capital.

Though government promises of increased safety and better traffic control seem to play on a loop, crime levels here continue to rise. In the 1990s, Nairobi, with its abundant grasslands, forests and rivers, was known as the “Green City in the Sun.” Today, we more often call it “Nairobbery.”

I see it every time I venture into Nairobi’s Central Business District. Navigating downtown Nairobi on foot can feel like an extreme sport. I clutch my handbag, keep my phone tucked away and walk swiftly to dodge “boda boda” (motorbike) riders and hawkers whose claim on pedestrian walks is quasi-authoritarian. Every so often, I’ll hear a woman scream “mwizi!” and then see a thief dart down an alleyway. If not that, it will be a motorist hooting loudly at a traffic stop to alert another driver that their vehicle is being stripped of its parts, right then and there.

Every city street is dotted with cameras. They fire off a blinding flash each time a car drives past. But other than that, they seem to have little effect. I have yet to hear of or witness an incident in which thugs were about to rob someone, looked up, saw the CCTV cameras then stopped and walked away.

Nairobi launched its massive traffic surveillance system in 2014 as the country was grappling with a terrorism crisis. A series of major attacks by al-Shabab militants, including the September 2013 attack at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping complex in which 67 people were killed, left the city reeling and politicians under extreme pressure to implement solutions. A modern, digitized surveillance system became a national security priority. And the Chinese tech hardware giant Huawei was there to provide it. 

A joint contract between Huawei and Kenya’s leading telecom, Safaricom, brought us the Integrated Urban Surveillance System, and we became the site of Huawei’s first “Safe City” project in Africa. Hundreds of cameras were deployed across Nairobi’s Central Business District and major highways, all networked and sending data to Kenya’s National Police Headquarters. Nairobi today boasts nearly 2,000 CCTV cameras citywide.

On paper, the system promised the ultimate silver bullet: It put real-time surveillance tools into the hands of more than 9,000 police officers to support crime prevention, accelerated responses and recovery. Officials say police monitor the Kenyan capital at all times and quickly dispatch first responders in case of an emergency.

But do the cameras work? Nine years since they were installed, it is hard to see the benefits of these electronic eyes that follow us around the city day after day.

Early on, Huawei claimed that from 2014 to 2015, crime had decreased by 46% in areas supported by their technologies, but the company has since scrubbed its website of this report. Kenya’s National Police Service reported a smaller drop in crime rates in 2015 in Nairobi, and an increase in Mombasa, the other major city where Huawei’s cameras were deployed. But by 2017, Nairobi’s reported crime rates surpassed pre-installation levels.

According to a June 2023 report by Coda’s partners at the Edgelands Institute, an organization that studies the digitalization of urban security, there has been a steady rise in criminal activity in Nairobi for nearly a decade.

So why did Nairobi adopt this system in the first place? One straightforward answer: Kenya had a problem, and China offered a solution. The Kenyan authorities had to take action and Huawei had cameras to sell. So they made a deal.

Nairobi’s surveillance apparatus today has become part of the “Digital Silk Road” — China’s quest to wire the world. It is a central component of the Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious global infrastructure development strategy that has spread China’s economic and political influence across the world. 

This hasn’t been easy for China in the industrialized West, with companies like Huawei battling sanctions by the U.S. and legal obstacles both in the U.K. and European Union countries. But in Africa, the Chinese technology giant has a quasi-monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure and technology deployment. Components from the company make up around 70% of 4G networks across the continent.

Chinese companies also have had a hand in building or renovating nearly 200 government buildings across the continent. They have built secure intra-governmental telecommunications networks and gifted computers to at least 35 African governments, according to research by the Heritage Foundation.

Grace Bomu Mutung’u, a Kenyan scholar of IT policy in Kenya and Africa, currently working with the Open Society Foundations, sees this as part of a race to develop and dominate network infrastructure, and to use this position to gather and capitalize on data that flows through networks.

“The Chinese are way ahead of imperial companies because they are approaching it from a different angle,” she told me. She posits that for China, the Digital Silk Road is meant to set a foundation for an artificial intelligence-based economy that China can control and profit from. Mutung’u derided African governments for being so beholden to development that their leaders keep missing the forest for the trees. “We seem to be caught in this big race. We have yet to define for ourselves what we want from this new economy.”

The failure to define what Africa wants from the data-driven economy and an obsession with basic infrastructure development projects is taking the continent through what feels like another Berlin scramble, Mutung’u told me, referring to the period between the 19th and early 20th centuries that saw European powers increase their stake in Africa from around 10% to about 90%.

“Everybody wants to claim a part of Africa,” she said. “If it wasn’t the Chinese, there would be somebody else trying to take charge of resources.” Mutung’u was alluding to China’s strategy of financing African infrastructure projects in exchange for the continent’s natural resources.

Nairobi was the first city in Africa to deploy Huawei’s Safe City system. Since then, cities in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and a dozen other countries across the continent have followed suit. All this has drawn scrutiny from rights groups who see the company as a conduit in the exportation of China’s authoritarian surveillance practices. 

Indeed, Nairobi’s vast web of networked CCTV cameras offers little in the way of transparency or accountability, and experts like Mutung’u say the country doesn’t have sufficient data protection laws in place to prevent the abuse of data moving through surveillance systems. When the surveillance system was put in place in 2014, the country had no data protection laws. Kenya’s Personal Data Protection Act came into force in 2019, but the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has yet to fully implement and enforce the law.

In a critique of what he described at the time as a “massive new spying system,” human rights lawyer and digital rights expert Ephraim Kenyanito argued that the government and Safaricom would be “operating this powerful new surveillance network effectively without checks and balances.” A few years later, in 2017, Privacy International raised concerns about the risks of capturing and storing all this data without clear policies on how that data should be treated or protected.

There was good reason to worry. In January 2018, an investigation by the French newspaper Le Monde revealed that there had been a data breach at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa following a hacking incident. Every night for five years, between 2012 and 2017, data downloaded from AU servers was sent to servers located in China. The Le Monde investigation alleged the involvement of the Chinese government, which denied the accusation. In March 2023, another massive cyber attack at AU headquarters left employees without access to the internet and their work emails for weeks.

The most recent incident brought to the fore growing concerns among local experts and advocacy groups about the surveillance of African leaders as Chinese construction companies continue to win contracts to build sensitive African government offices, and Chinese tech companies continue to supply our telecommunication and surveillance infrastructure. But if these fears have had any effect on agreements between the powers that be, it is not evident.

As the cameras on the streets of Nairobi continue to flash, researchers continue to ponder how, if at all, digital technologies are being used in the approach to security, coexistence and surveillance in the capital city.

The Edgelands Institute report found little evidence linking the adoption of surveillance technology and a decrease in crime in Kenya. It did find that a driving factor in rising crime rates was unemployment. For people under 35, the unemployment rate has almost doubled since 2015 and now hovers at 13.5%.

In a 2022 survey by Kenya’s National Crime Research Centre, a majority of respondents identified community policing as the most effective method of crime reduction. Only 4.2% of respondents identified the use of technology such as CCTV cameras as an effective method.

And the system has meanwhile raised concerns among privacy-conscious members of society regarding potential infringement upon the right to privacy for Kenyans and the technical capabilities of these technologies, including AI facial recognition. The secrecy often surrounding this surveillance, the Edgelands Institute report notes, complicates trust between citizens and the state.

It may be some time yet before the lights and the cameras lead to action.

Surveillance Cities: A Magnum Photos / Coda collaboration

Digital footprints on the dark side of Geneva

Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos

Watching the streets of Medellín

Juan David Restrepo Ortiz

and

Juan Diego Restrepo Echeverri

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The country’s biometric system was intended to reduce incidences of "double registration"  — a problem that mainly affects ethnic Somalis with Kenyan citizenship who falsely registered as refugees in the 1990s in order to receive vital food aid. However, tens of thousands are still in limbo. 

Earlier this week, member of parliament Aden Duale denounced Fred Matiang'i, the nation’s interior cabinet secretary, demanding an explanation for why 20,000 Kenyans are still ineligible for identification cards, including 18,500 stateless youths.

Garissa County, which Duale represents, has some of the highest numbers of double registrants in Kenya and is home to one of the world’s largest refugee camps. Over the past six years, government task forces have been created to delist Kenyan citizens from the national refugee database, with questionable success.

Duale requested a report of the vetting process from the Kenyan Interior Ministry, which heads the biometric registration project, and a statement from the security committee of the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency — which, along with the government oversees the national database — is also waiting for guidance. “The report is currently with the government. We are also waiting for their feedback, and then we can move forward with corrections to the verification process,” said Eujin Byun, spokesperson for UNHCR Kenya.

In Kenya, the Ministry of Interior and UNHCR are in the process of merging their parallel registration systems in order to sync respective data on refugees and asylum seekers. But the refugee protection agency is ultimately without the power to expedite the feedback report they need to make assessments.

“UNHCR is a guest of the government and can only support the government in registering refugees; it’s ultimately a function of national authority,” Byun said.

Kenya’s ID card program has been criticized for further marginalizing already vulnerable populations, but double registrants are not the only people who encounter bureaucratic hurdles. Kenya’s elderly are affected too.

Earlier this week, Kenyan philanthropist Stanley Kamau called on the government to review registration criteria, to improve access to essential social services for older people.  

Kamau said that using ID cards — required for many aspects of daily life in Kenya, such as registering a SIM card and opening a bank account — as the only proof of age has excluded those without documentation from receiving state assistance, to which people aged 70 and over are entitled.

“We have so many elderly people who have no ID cards and should not be locked out on account of lack of it,” Kamau said.

Photo by Klein Ongaki and Rich Allela

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The 32-year-old community organizer, activist and writer is using his platform on Radio Gargar — the settlement’s only local station — to battle a surge of misinformation surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. 

He tells his listeners “don’t panic,” provides them with regular updates and brings on experts to dispel the myths around the virus. His voice has become so well known that people refer to him as the “Corona Guy.”

To date, Kenya has recorded just 2,862 cases of Covid-19 and 85 deaths. Largely cut off from the rest of the country, Dadaab — home to more than 217,000 people and one of the largest settlements of its kind in the world — looked like it had been spared. 

That changed on May 18, when the Kenyan Health Ministry confirmed the first two cases of Covid-19 in the Ifo and Dagahaley camps.

A full-scale Covid-19 outbreak in Dadaab could be devastating. While the complex’s poor conditions create a perfect environment for the virus, Mire sees “ignorance and a lack of education” about the disease as an equally serious threat.   

“Most of the community are not even concerned about the virus,” he told me by telephone. 

“People say, ‘We are black, our sun is hot,’” in the belief that both factors offer some form of protection against infection, he explained.

Mire was just three years old when his family arrived in the camps, after fleeing the civil war in neighboring Somalia. He now runs the Dadaab Book Drive, an educational initiative set up by former residents, and has become a prominent local figure. 

As with anywhere else in the world, it is difficult to pinpoint where the misinformation spreading through Dadaab originates, but social media networks, WhatsApp groups and word of mouth all play a part in its proliferation. Mire sees it as his job to present factually accurate narratives that are just as easy to understand and pass from person to person.

On air and social media, Mire “preaches the gospel” of washing hands and provides a steady stream of reliable information to residents on how best to protect themselves against the virus. He believes that radio is by far the best way to reach people in Dadaab — a view that makes sense when one considers Somalia’s age-old tradition of oral storytelling.

But, for the camp’s residents, taking even basic precautions against Covid-19 presents a huge challenge. “Dadaab is a place where you queue for everything,” Mire told me. “Social distancing is not something you can do here, when hundreds of people share just one tap for water.” 

Dr John Kiogora, senior health coordinator at the International Rescue Committee, agrees. He explained that, owing to poor sanitation and overcrowding, refugee settlements — be they in Kenya, Lebanon or Bangladesh — are highly vulnerable to large-scale outbreaks of infectious diseases. He added that the density of Dadaab’s population is a particularly serious problem.

“Refugee families in Dadaab live together in tents and makeshift homes, and are confined together in small spaces without access to proper water, sanitation and hygiene, making conditions ripe for the spread of the disease,” he said.  

Muhuba Hassan Hilow, a 52-year-old single mother, who lives with her eight children in the Dagahaley camp, faces these realities every day. For her, following even the most rudimentary hygiene and social distancing guidelines is an impossible luxury.

“We have very little water, no soap to wash hands, and just enough to wash our clothes,” she told me. “This is a disease God has brought upon us — all I can do is pray.” 

Extra provisions have been made within Dadaab, including three isolation centers with a total of 800 beds and one ventilator, and case numbers have not risen since the initial confirmations. According to Eujin Byun, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency in Kenya, “So far we haven’t had any cases of local transmission and contact tracing is ongoing.” 

Mire hopes the figures remain static and is using every available means to pass on potentially life-saving facts to the people of Dadaab. He has helped with the translation into Somali of World Health Organization (WHO) information on Covid-19, which has been distributed around the camp in the form of leaflets and posters. He is now busy producing a radio play about the pandemic and has recently received a grant from the media development charity Internews to continue his work.

More often than not, he finds himself having to disprove ideas based on fake science — that the virus does not affect Somalis or that five daily Islamic prayers will protect individuals against infection, for instance. 

However, a number of darker theories are also common in Dadaab. While some residents do not take the disease seriously, many others are terrified by it. This fear has been directed at “ foreigners” and those who have recently travelled abroad. 

“Some believe that it originated in the West,” Mire told me. “There are also rumors that these cases were caused by international aid agencies to make money.” 

Sixty-four-year-old Hassan Mohamed Yusuf lives in Dadaab’s Hagadera camp. Having fled Mogadishu 16 years ago, he is now the father of six adult children and grandfather to 13 more. He explained that whenever someone comes in from the outside world, terror grips his neighbors.

“Everyone is very scared. People literally run away from them shouting, ‘This guy is a foreigner,’ or ‘He has recently been to America,’” he said.

This tide of misinformation about Covid-19 is not unique to Dadaab. 

In May, the WHO warned that Africa could be hit with 44 million infections and 190,000 deaths. In April a survey of more than 3,000 people carried out in Somalia by Save the Children showed that 42% of respondents believed Covid-19 to be part of a “government campaign.” Aid workers and peacekeepers have also been attacked by angry crowds in the Central African Republic, as foreigners are increasingly seen as a key vector of infection.

Kenya is one of Africa’s refugee hotspots. The nation hosts more than half a million displaced people, most of whom have escaped conflict in Somalia and South Sudan. 

Mire worries that this fear of outsiders will also be projected onto them. He said that the Kenyan government “does not fully trust refugees,” and that members of this vulnerable population are likely to find themselves being scapegoated as carriers of the disease.

On May 16, President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a directive sealing Kenya off from Somalia. Prior to this, in late April, the government had placed camps such as Dadaab and Kakuma in the northwest of the country under strict lockdowns, in an effort to stem the potential spread of Covid-19. Travel in and out of the camps has been stopped, with permission granted to aid workers on a case by case basis.

The Kenyan government has previously threatened to close down the Dadaab complex entirely — most recently in March 2019 — but has rolled back its plans every time. Now, Mire and many others fear that politicians may seize opportunities provided by the pandemic to further this agenda.  

As it stands, Dadaab is now more isolated than ever. Since the WHO designated Covid-19 as a global pandemic in March, “no one has told us much about the virus,” Yusuf said. “Everything has shut down and the aid workers are nowhere to be seen.” 

“I am so scared because I have diabetes, and I have heard that people like me will be most affected,” he added. “We have very little, and no healthcare here. This will finish us.”  

Yusuf has, however, taken Mire’s announcements to heart. Despite warm greetings being a big part of Somali culture, after listening to the advice on Radio Gargar, he now no longer shakes hands with people when he meets them. Proof that the message is working.

Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images

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Adan is a victim of what is known as double registration. Fleeing drought within the country’s borders in the 1990s, many ethnic Somali Kenyans falsely claimed to be escaping Somalia’s civil war, in order to access vital food aid. Now, because their details appear on biometric refugee databases, the very system responsible for protecting asylum seekers has effectively rendered them stateless.  

“There are many challenges if you don't have an ID,” Adan said. “If you want to open up a bank account, you need an ID. If you want to see someone in court, you will be asked for an ID. In Kenya, you cannot go anywhere without an ID.”

Without this crucial legal document, many political rights and economic entitlements are inaccessible in Kenya. They range from taking formal employment and registering a cell phone SIM card to opening a bank account and even entering government and business offices.

The outbreak of the Somali civil war in the early 1990s coincided with a drought in northeastern Kenya that drove tens of thousands of desperate citizens towards the camp. It was at this time that Adan, then five years old, was taken to Dadaab by her grandmother. 

Faced with a vast influx of people, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — the global agency responsible for displaced people — struggled to distinguish between those uprooted by conflict in Somalia and ethnic Somalis with Kenyan citizenship. Because the boundary between Somalia and Kenya is highly porous and family networks often stretch across territories, many ethnic Somali Kenyans and their families were able to pass as refugees. 

In Dadaab, ethnic Somali Kenyans could access food aid and education that, even as citizens of one of the country’s most marginalized regions, were often out of their reach. Another draw was the prospect of relocation in Europe or the U.S. 

Adan’s grandmother could not have predicted that a seemingly harmless lie to feed herself and her granddaughter would have such serious implications so many years later. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of ethnic Somali Kenyans who have applied for a Kenyan national ID have been turned away on the grounds that they were already registered as refugees.

The root of this problem lies in an increasing global fervor for the collection of biometric data. In recent years, biometrics have become part of the global development agenda and a proposed panacea to a range of problems. One of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is to provide legal identity to all by 2030. International organizations ranging from the World Bank to the World Food Program, in conjunction with governments and multinational tech companies, have promoted the use of digital identity systems. 

Nations across the global south have embraced this new technology. In countries including India, Ghana, Lebanon, Nigeria and South Africa, biometric identifiers are increasingly used in electoral processes, the distribution of aid, to gain access to financial services and to manage refugee populations.

The use of centralized, integrated biometric databases has been hailed as a definitive solution to the problem of identity fraud. In the early 2000s, the UNHCR began rolling out fingerprint and iris scans in refugee camps across the world. Biometric registration was first introduced to Kenya in 2007, in a bid to cut costs and reduce any further double registration. 

The agency soon began sharing parts of its biometric and IT systems with Kenya’s Refugee Affairs Secretariat, which has since 2011 slowly and unevenly taken over the refugee registration process. The UNHCR has also strengthened the Kenyan state’s ability to carry out registration and develop its own refugee database.

Enabling host countries to build or access refugee databases has often stood in conflict with the humanitarian goals of the UNHCR. The Kenyan government has a long history of hostility towards both ethnic Somali citizens and refugees. Kenyan Somali citizens also face systemic discrimination. 

Now, the National Registration Bureau of Kenya can run the fingerprints of any person who applies for a national ID through the government’s refugee database. If they are flagged as holding refugee status, the document cannot be issued. This throws people like Amina Ali Adan into legal limbo. 

As one Kenyan man who preferred to remain anonymous explained: “You can’t bypass the power of that fingerprint. It is a blockade.” He had falsely claimed refugee status long before the Kenyan government had acquired the technical capacity to crosscheck citizens. Though he possesses a worn Kenyan ID, obtained at age 18, he fears that as the state’s biometric systems improve, he might one day be found out.

This collision of administrative policy and data integration has inadvertently marginalized tens of thousands of Kenyans. Like Adan, Hamdi Mohamed Mahamoud is a Kenyan citizen from Garissa. Now in his 20s, he cannot obtain a Kenyan ID because he is registered as a refugee. Unable to attend university or gain formal employment, Mahamoud opened up a kiosk selling phone credit, sodas and sundries. But his undocumented status is a constant impediment to business. 

“If I want to open an M-Pesa line,” he said, referring to the popular mobile payment service, “I can’t register without an ID. If I get a bit of money, I don’t have a place to put it. It’s necessary for me to keep it at home. And at home, it can be lost. I don’t have any kind of [bank] account.”

Trapped in legal limbo 

Last year, the Kenyan government agreed to address the problem of double registration. Grassroots pressure from local civil society groups like Haki na Sheria (meaning ‘Justice and Law’ in Swahili) was instrumental in this decision. In November, vetting committees were established in counties that border Somalia, in order to assess the veracity of citizenship claims. The aim was to remove from the refugee database anyone deemed to be a genuine Kenyan citizen. 

Crowds of frustrated people lined up for days, waiting to be processed. Some traveled over four hundred miles to attend. Others were turned away for lacking the correct documents. Many young men refused to come forward at all, fearing interrogation by security agents seeking to weed out members of the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab. Almost 15,000 people were vetted in Garissa County alone. This is partially attributable to Haki na Sheria, which provided paralegal support to victims of double registration throughout the vetting process. However, many were still left out, owing to the inability of government officials to cover every location within the time period set aside for the process. 

Despite these hitches, many civil society groups and double-registered individuals welcomed the vetting program. However, there is concern that the Kenyan government — which has started and abandoned similar schemes in the past — will not stick to its promise to deregister citizens from the refugee database.

The problem of double registration in Kenya highlights the pitfalls of humanitarian biometrics. Under donor pressure, refugee organizations often share vulnerable people’s data in order to limit fraud and strengthen the capacities of host states. But linking refugee systems to those of host countries, which do not always prioritize the protection of displaced people, can be risky. This raises questions about the merits of collecting sensitive personal information in the first place and the risks of storing it in centralized databases. 

In Kenya, thousands of citizens face an increasingly uncertain future. Among their concerns is the threat of deportation. The Kenyan government routinely carries out deportations of Somalis living in the country, often rounding up both citizens and refugees. 

“Today, I heard that people were being picked up from their homes and deported to Somalia. If I was taken to Somalia, I wouldn’t even know where I was,” said Adan Abdullahi Daqane, who is also double registered. “This time, I pray to God to help us, to bring us IDs.”

This piece was produced in collaboration with Privacy International

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Since its introduction to Kenya in 2012, digital lending has surged, attracting millions of customers. Today, around 50 mobile lending apps are available in Kenya. Yet as digital credit grows more popular, so do the soaring ranks of debtors and defaulters.

Just a few weeks after applying for credit, Wilson was receiving calls and texts from Branch and Tala representatives about late payments. Unable to repay his loans, Wilson ignored the increasingly menacing messages. “I didn’t know what a CRB [Credit Reference Bureau] was back then,” he explained. Tala and Branch soon reported him to the CRB, a relatively new institution that had come to Kenya in 2010.

When I spoke to Wilson, now 24, he did not know how much he owed, or how to get a credit report. Wilson’s poor credit rating, which he had previously shrugged off, had “become bothersome.” Now the owner of two retail kiosks, he wanted to access more credit to grow his businesses.

Proponents of digital and mobile nano-loans view them as a means towards greater financial inclusion for the world’s poor. Melinda Gates has praised Tala’s founder and CEO for transforming lives. A recent report by Mastercard Foundation and the International Financial Corporation extolled digital financial services in Africa as “revolutionary.”

But ironically, many Kenyans are finding themselves excluded from financial services after failing to pay loans equivalent to only a few dollars. Around 2.7 million Kenyans have been blacklisted by CRBs in the last three years — 400,000 for defaulting on loans of less than $2. And as is often the case in rapidly expanding and poorly regulated markets, tech has outpaced consumer protection and civic education. 

Corporate Surveillance State

One of the least-acknowledged and perhaps most insidious aspects of digital credit is the way it is expanding the reach of governments and corporations into people’s everyday lives. Financial technology, or fintech, is commodifying the routine habits of Kenyans, transforming their behavior into reputational data to be monitored and assessed.

This has been largely enabled through Safaricom, a partly government-owned multinational telecom that controls the lion's share of the Kenyan market. In partnership with CBA bank, which is partly owned by the president’s family, Safaricon has developed M-Shwari, a digital lending and savings service that counts most Kenyan adults as users. As both tax collector and shareholder, the Kenyan government has a direct financial stake in the digital lending sector.

Then there is the issue of data capture. Safaricom is not only dominating Kenya’s once cash-based, “informal” economy through services like M-Pesa; it is also collecting a great deal of data on customers and their consumer habits through their phones. According to the watchdog group Privacy International, mandatory SIM card registration laws have enabled “a more pervasive system of mass surveillance” throughout Africa.

Fintech companies have gained unprecedented access into the lives of ordinary Kenyans. They use everything from GPS data to how often people call their parents to social media feeds to assess customers’ creditworthiness. As Sofia Zab, former Director of Marketing at Branch, told Kenya’s Standard Media: “We use smartphone data to build a financial identity for applicants. Our machine learning algorithms analyze over 2000 data points to make lending decisions. This includes M-Pesa transaction SMS, call behavior and handset information.” Credit analytics firms like the American startup Cignifi are also culling data from unbanked African populations to develop predictive algorithms.

The accumulation of digital credit histories is particularly worrisome in a country that lacks sufficient data protection laws. Many apps have terms of service (like Tala’s privacy policy) that reserve the right to disclose users’ information to third parties. 

Last year, a particularly brazen privacy violation occurred when late-paying users of the loan app Okash discovered the company was texting friends and relatives requesting that they “kindly inform” debtors of their loan obligations. As one Twitter user complained, “Okash does not value privacy. If you default [on] your payment by 3 days, they hack your personal contacts and start calling people…They be calling your dad, mum, sister, friends, your ex, landlord…seriously.”

“It’s tempting. They sweet talk you”

The idea that financial inclusion can be achieved through debt is not new. Only a decade ago, microfinance institutions were celebrated as one possible solution to global poverty. But numerous studies showing the lukewarm effects of microcredit eventually “cooled the development community’s enthusiasm.”

Among today’s development experts, some believe that digital credit can deliver on those unfulfilled promises. Digital credit is virtually instantaneous, requires no face-to-face contact, and uses non-traditional data like airtime usage to assess risk. Lower transaction costs and ease-of-use also indicate a wider customer base. 

Whether it will lift people out of poverty is another matter. As Geraldine Makunda from Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya) argues, “there is a mismatch between high financial inclusion rates and financial health.” Over 83% of Kenyans now have access to formal financial services according to a 2019 FinAccess report. Yet as Makunda notes, “the majority of Kenyans say that they can’t manage their day-to-day needs.”

Nor are people always using digital credit the way proponents intended. Many development agencies have a predetermined image of the typical user: a small business owner who stands to benefit from access to credit. Among M-Shwari’s most savvy customers are mama mboga (market women who sell produce) who tend to repay loans in a single working day. But phone surveys from Kenya and Tanzania suggest that most consumers use digital loans for daily needs and personal consumption. 

Since most Kenyans are already struggling to make ends meet, digital credit is likely to worsen poverty by contributing to cycles of indebtedness. Research by FSD Kenya suggests that two out of three Kenyans experience debt stress, many skipping meals to service loans. Meanwhile, radio, SMS, and online ads continue to sing the praises of digital credit: “Lainisha Maisha na M-Shwari. [Simplify Life with M-Shwari.] Watch your money grow.” 

“It’s tempting. They sweet talk you,” explains Simon*, who has been blacklisted for defaulting on two digital loans. Such problems mirror larger global trends. Russia is experiencing spiraling consumer debt, while in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, payday loans have long plagued consumers. 

Previously “credit invisible” people are now ever more vulnerable to predatory digital services. Many observers are concerned that easy access to mobile loans is fueling an online gambling craze among Kenya’s youth. 

Financial Literacy and the Debt Trap

Nowadays, there is much talk in Kenya about the need to regulate the digital lending sector. The Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), Patrick Njoroge, recently raised the alarm over unlicensed credit-only digital lenders, whom he accused of “displaying shylock-like behavior while hiding behind nice-looking applications.” 

But it’s not clear whether regulation alone can solve the looming problem of consumer debt or who, for that matter, should be charged with overseeing the sector.

Facing mounting scrutiny, several of Kenya’s credit-only lending firms have recently come together to form the Digital Lenders Association of Kenya (DLAK). According to their Chairman, Robert Masinde, DLAK seeks “to professionalize the industry and create clear standards around which to generate best practice.” The Central Bank’s Njoroge has publicly dismissed their efforts at “self-regulation.” But the Central Bank of Kenya has faced its own share of criticism for failing to keep Safaricom and CBA bank in check. Last year, a consumer rights group sued the CBK for allowing M-Shwari to skirt lending caps through a linguistic loophole — redefining its interest rate as a “facilitation fee.” 

Government-licensed M-Shwari currently dominates the digital lending market, creating a windfall for both the state and ruling family. Its profits also spell a conflict of interest for state officials responsible for protecting Kenyan consumers. 

It is not just lending but also credit reporting that is generating heated public debate. Though the government is putting in place reforms, defaulters are still blacklisted for five years regardless of the size of their loan. 

Japheth Ogutu, Executive Director of the Consumer Downtown Association (CDA), a consumer advocacy group, argues that blacklisting just discourages people from repaying their loans: “People have a feeling that when you take them to the [Credit Reporting Bureau], you’ve already blocked them out. They don’t see a need to pay [the lenders] back.” Kenyan CRBs (which include subsidiaries of the Icelandic company Creditinfo and the American company TransUnion) also profit by encouraging customers to purchase often-superfluous clearance certificates. “The CRB should not be a tool to punish Kenyans,” Ogutu says.

Many stakeholders argue for the need to promote greater financial literacy among the Kenyan public. Among the most searched topics in Kenya earlier this year was “How to check Credit Reference Bureau status” and “How to pay Tala loan.” Still, some Kenyans have found themselves erroneously listed with CRBs, especially as easy access to digital credit has made fraud an increasingly common problem. 

Growing concerns with consumer protection do not seem to have dampened investor enthusiasm. Market purists argue that mass participation and choice will eventually resolve the problems of the digital credit sector. And there is no denying that increasing numbers of Kenyans are opting into digital lending. According to a 2017 survey, 27% of Kenyans borrow digitally. Despite the often high interest rates and short payment windows, many Kenyans would rather have access to financial services than none at all. 

While it’s easy to celebrate greater consumer choice, there is ample reason to be cautious about giving people the “right” to accrue debt. For some Kenyans, a low credit score is a relatively minor nuisance. But for others, it has dire consequences. A registrar at a CRB dispute resolution center recounted the case of a man who wanted to send his ill son abroad for treatment, but was ineligible for a bank loan because he was mistakenly listed as a defaulter. Despite pursuing multiple avenues to clear his name, the father couldn't acquire a loan in time and his son died. “I had to leave the room for thirty minutes so he could cry,” recalled the registrar.

It’s also hard to predict how these scores might be used in the future. Digital lending may produce new inequalities as customers are increasingly divided into the creditworthy and the delinquent. China is gradually implementing a “social credit” scoring system that has already barred millions of people from sending their children to private school or purchasing high-speed train tickets and plane flights.

Kenyan consumers may have more options today than a decade ago. But these options are likely to diminish as more and more Kenyan youth find themselves saddled with debt, branded as defaulters by multinationals that quietly assess their worth through the mute calculus of distant algorithms. Brenda Wambui, host of the popular Kenyan podcast Otherwise?, recently asked: “If there is actually a debt trap, what do we need to do to fix it?” The answer may lie in a turn away from digital credit and towards a more empowering vision of financial inclusion.

* the names of individuals have been changed at their request.

The post Mobile credit expands mass surveillance of ordinary Kenyans appeared first on Coda Story.

This modest turnout is a partial success for the Kenyan government’s inauspicious launch of Huduma Namba (or “Service Number” in Swahili), an ambitious mass biometric registration campaign marred by controversy and legal challenges. Kenya’s ruling coalition has branded itself a vanguard in digital governance, and Huduma Namba, a $60 million project, is its latest initiative. Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i claims that Huduma Namba will not only enhance security and curb corruption, but also “streamline resource allocation and improve service delivery.”

Since Huduma Namba’s nationwide rollout began on April 2, state officials have taken to the radio, TV, print media, and Twitter to exhort its benefits. Registration stations have been set up in heavily trafficked areas with 35,000 tablets in use across the country. State agencies have threatened to cut off services to those who refuse to register. According to government sources, more than 20 million people have enrolled thus far. Gradually, amidst cajoling and pressure, Kenyans are lining up to acquire a number that many state representatives claim will soon become essential.

If it proves successful, the Huduma Namba initiative will capture and consolidate millions of Kenyans’ data into a single digital system—the National Integrated Identity Management System. This database, according to President Uhuru Kenyatta, will serve as the “single source of truth on personal identity in Kenya.” Every recipient will be issued with a unique identity number not unlike the Indian Aadhaar number. As one assistant chief called it, Huduma Namba will be “the mother of all numbers."

But many Kenyans are skeptical. In a country where moral and political critiques often draw on religious themes, rumors have swirled that Huduma Namba is the mark of the devil. The Kenyan Human Rights Commission (KHRC), a nonprofit, has called on Kenyans to boycott the initiative, while parliament and the courts have threatened to derail it entirely. On Twitter, the government’s aggressive Huduma Namba push has become an object of derision. One Twitter user, referencing Kenya’s recent dry spell, remarked: “The government is falling short of saying; No Huduma Namba, no rains.”

Kenyan officials, however, continue to press on. Huduma Namba is the latest in a global trend—also seen in countries like China and India—towards governing through big data. State representatives have portrayed Huduma Namba as a neutral and efficient means to collect, verify, and digitize Kenyans’ bio-data, which will consolidate all other registration numbers in “one digital wallet.”

Despite confusion about its purported benefits, the enrollment process is relatively straightforward. Anyone above the age of six can register. Enrollees must arrive with at least one government-issued ID—whether a birth certificate, driving license, national identity card, passport, or alien card. Registration agents assist people in filling out a two-page form, which asks for an array of personal information, including birth details, marital status, address, education level and land holdings, that is then scanned onto a tablet that doubles as a camera and fingerprint scanner.

At the end of the enrollment process, recipients are handed a long strip of paper that will let them claim their Huduma Namba at some as-yet-undisclosed future date. Many are left wondering how and when they will finally receive the elusive number.

Ten Year Ban

Concerns about efficiency and scepticism are not the only issues swirling around the program. There are grounds for unease about the French multinational charged with collecting the data of Kenyans. IDEMIA, formerly known as OT-Morpho, first courted controversy during the contested 2017 election when it was forced to deny claims that its biometric voter identification system had been hacked. Opposition leaders have accused the company, which supplied voter identification and results transmission kits, of misconduct—an allegation that IDEMIA vigorously denies.

But there are serious grounds for concern. A recent report by Privacy International and the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) has shown that voter data was available for sale in the run-up to the election. And just last week, the Kenyan Parliament voted to ban IDEMIA from conducting business in the country for at least ten years.

The ban hasn’t deterred the government, which announced that the Huduma Namba exercise will continue in spite of parliamentary blacklisting. Still, this vote has cast even greater scrutiny on the secretive process by which IDEMIA was awarded the government tender. Earlier this year, MPs criticized the government for circumventing Parliament’s Budget and Appropriations Committee and pushing the initiative into law through a Miscellaneous Amendment Act.

Minority groups also worry about discrimination. “The government is speaking about a ‘single source of truth.’ But whose truth is it?" asks Naima Ibrahim of the Nubian Rights Forum, one of three civil rights organizations that filed a case with the High Court of Kenya to block Huduma Namba. Ibrahim fears that the Huduma Namba registration process will worsen discrimination against Nubians, one among several predominantly Muslim communities who face discrimination in acquiring identity documents. Like many Somalis and Arabs, they are often perceived as potential refugees, terrorists, or foreigners.

Whose Truth?

For decades, civil registration has been a site of contestation over who is and is not “Kenyan.” Without a legal identity in Kenya, individuals cannot move around freely, gain formal employment, open a bank account, register a SIM card, or access numerous other private and public services. Citizens and refugees alike often turn to illicit means of gaining documentation. For the past seven years, Mohamed (not his real name) has tried in vain to acquire a coveted national ID. Despite a cache of documentation proving his citizenship, he is met with suspicion as a Kenyan-Indian and Muslim. “Today, they say you are an alien. The next day, Al Shabaab,” Mohamed said. One registration officer rebuffed him on the grounds that "many refugees have the name Mohamed.” Others have demanded bribes.

Rights groups fear that the Huduma Namba process will only digitize these existing forms of discrimination. According to the Nubian Rights Forum, the government should not move forward until it can “improve the current registration systems and eliminate discrimination in access.”

But it’s not only the stateless and marginalized who should be concerned about Huduma Namba, say civil rights advocates. Kenya has yet to enact any data protection legislation. Because of this, the government is collecting information “in the absence of any real legal oversight” said Nanjala Nyabola, a Nairobi-based political analyst. There are unconfirmed reports that the government is storing unencrypted files collected during the enrollment process for later processing. IT experts and human rights activists are also worried about recent data breaches.

Contradictory and inconsistent government statements have further heightened public confusion. While IDEMIA has collected the data, the Ministry of ICT claims that the “the core registration software of the National Information Integrated Management System (NIIMS) was designed and integrated by local software engineers."

In early April, Matiang’i appeared on Iqra FM, a popular Muslim radio program, to reassure listeners that undocumented people could register. Nevertheless, civil rights groups have reported that those lacking identity documents have been turned away by registration agents. Mohamed, who doesn’t have an ID card, has not bothered to enroll.

Monetizing Data

This has created an environment rife with speculation and rumor about the government’s intentions. Like everywhere else, data is a valuable political and economic commodity in Kenya, and the gradual digitization of Kenya’s population databases has been a boon to mobile credit providers like Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecommunications company. If used as a census, a tax register, or as proof of citizenship, Huduma Namba could impact the distribution of resources under Kenya’s constitution, expand the county’s tax base, or shape voter registration.

Dr. David Ndii, a critic of the government, has accused the ruling party of using Huduma Namba to market a new mobile phone lending service linked to the president’s family. He describes the registration scheme as “a social security cum surveillance system with commercial interests lurking in the background.”

It is little surprise that many Kenyans are likewise suspicious of government intentions. Over the last year, corruption scandals involving large tenders have plagued the Jubilee administration. On Tuesday, Kenyans congregated in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park for a People’s March to protest government graft and misguided initiatives, including the Huduma Namba exercise.

Testing Ground

To many of its detractors, the Huduma Namba exercise is yet another white elephant scheme. But the project also speaks to larger dangers involved with the growing reach of data-gathering and biometric technology.

Many technology and financial companies view countries in the Global South as “testbeds for innovations in technological surveillance.” Postcolonial African countries and other “low-rights environments” are especially vulnerable to invasive, non-transparent and undemocratic methods of data harvesting. In the West, Cambridge Analytica may have become infamous for its role in Brexit and President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, but the company first honed its techniques in countries like Nigeria, India and Kenya where it operated with far less oversight and restraint.

This means that technological fixes are often imposed on African countries without sufficient consideration for the potential benefits or hazards to local populations.

“The more I continue talking to experts involved in the litigation against Huduma Numba, the more I realize this project was rushed, ill-defined with no privacy safeguards of sensitive data collected from Kenyans,” said Hassan Ibrahim, a local journalist.

As one commentator in the Daily Nation recently wrote, in the end, people will “be left with a fancy card” and no guarantee of better services.

Kenyans, however, are not passive recipients of technology. Due to wide-ranging objections from legal advocacy and human rights groups, the High Court of Kenya has put brakes on the registration effort. The government has been warned that it cannot tie government services to Huduma Namba, impose a registration deadline, or compel anyone to register. The court has also barred the state from collecting DNA or GPS data or sharing data with outside parties.

A final determination in the case is still pending. Meanwhile, Kenyan officials have already shown signs of flouting the court ruling. Refugees in the town of Kakuma are being “persuaded to undertake the Huduma Namba registration without any prior knowledge of the exercise,” reported journalist Qaabata Boru. Such pressure, he argued, is an unlawful violation of the ruling declaring registration to be voluntary.

Civil rights and legal empowerment groups like the Nubian Rights Forum, NAMATI, and Haki na Sheria continue to challenge the constitutionality of Huduma Namba and push for greater transparency. In the end, passive resistance may prove the most powerful form of protest. Many Kenyans are simply refusing to line up at registration stations. As the Kenyan entrepreneur Huston Malande said in a widely shared thread on Twitter: “To date, I’ve tried to find one single source of truth about Huduma Namba. Nothing...As always, the choice is yours. I’m out.”

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