Fabiola Schwarz is a research associate and second-year PhD candidate at the Professorship for Global Security and Technology of the School of Politics and Public Policy / Technical University of Munich. Her dissertation focuses on digital repression in Africa. Specifically, she looks at influencers of state-led Internet shutdowns and their effects on opposition activism, including circumvention behavior. More generally, Fabiola is interested in the choices for specific digital repressive tools by governments and their interplay. Thereby, she mainly applies quantitative, computational and mixed methods.

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Maurice is a PhD candidate at the Centre for International Security of the Hertie School in Berlin. His research interests lie at the intersection of technology and political violence. In his dissertation project, he examines the legal mechanisms underpinning digital repression in African countries. Previously, Maurice worked as Consultant for the United Nations and as Research Assistant on various research projects. He holds a Master of Social Science in Peace and Conflict Studies from Uppsala University and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Public Administration from the University of Konstanz.

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While recently, overt forms of digital repression like Internet shutdowns have increased among African states, some regimes opt for more covert means. The Rwandan regime, for instance, uses spyware to repress dissent at home and abroad for keeping an impeccable image towards Western economic partners. This raises the question: does economic cooperation shape regime’s digital repression preferences?

We argue that significant economic ties with democracies influence recipient governments' internet control strategies due to audience costs. Public accountability affects donors' and investors' willingness to cooperate with overtly repressive countries. This motivates recipient countries to at least appear to act in accordance with international standards. Therefore, we assume that countries more economically dependent on democracies prefer covert digital repression, such as targeted surveillance and censorship of individual internet users. In contrast, governments with closer ties to autocracies are rather indifferent or more likely to employ overt measures like internet shutdowns or website blocking. Combining network testing and digital forensics data from various sources, we examine the effect of aid and trade relations on digital repression preferences of all African countries from 2014 to 2023. Initial findings reveal that trade relations, more than development assistance, influence governments' internet control strategies. Notably, strong trading ties with democracies are associated with an increase in covert digital repression. Followingly, we will look closer into the role of specific forms of economic cooperation and assess the causality of our findings by outlining case studies where aid and trade relations have shifted rapidly over the past decade.

This is the first comparative large-N studies to assess the relationship between economic cooperation and such a broad range of digital repressive tools. Combining concepts of international political economy and data on digital repression, we aim to shed light on the growing use and spread of digital authoritarianism across Africa. This contributes to the broader debate on democratic backsliding and the governance of cyberspace.