A Tecno Mobile building in Ikeja, Nigeria. The company is a subsidiary of Transsion, the top smartphone seller in Africa. Credit: Lightfast Media, Creative Commons
U.S. efforts to persuade allies of the security threat posed by Huawei secured an important victory recently with the United Kingdom’s decision to ban the Chinese telecommunications giant from its 5G network. The UK’s anti-Huawei policy, announced only two weeks after India became the first country to ban the Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps, might appear to signal that the tide is turning against China’s global technological ambitions. More quietly, however, Chinese startups continue to find success abroad.
Over the past decade, Beijing has led a concerted push for its investors as well as its most innovative technology startups to penetrate emerging markets and to operate at an increasingly global scale. Developing countries have emerged as destinations of choice for Chinese entrepreneurs looking to take their craft abroad. Today, there are more than 10,000 Chinese firms, most of them privately owned, operating across Africa. Chinese star
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