The fear that China is going to export digital authoritarianism and repression to Africa is way overblown and oversimplified in Western media reports and think tank analysis cautions Iginio Gagliardone, a media scholar at Wits University in Johannesburg and one of the world’s foremost scholars on Chinese technological influence in Africa.

“It is now more than a decade since I started researching China-Africa relations through the deployment of digital infrastructures and the expansion of Chinese media outlets, and it is surprising – but also a bit unnerving – how the questions and claims surrounding China’s role in Africa have largely remained the same,” said Gagliardone, author of the book “China, Africa and the Future of the Internet,” in a post published last week on the London School of Economics blog.