Last year, Nigerian lawmakers gave the go-ahead to a joint committee of police, public procurement, debt management and IT officials to investigate ZTE over a $470 million contract for the National Communication Security System. The investigation, currently in progress, is supposed to determine whether the award of the contract to ZTE conformed to guidelines for government contracts.

The Ugandan government last year blocked a $74 million loan from the Import and Export Bank of China (EXIM) earmarked for a digital migration project, in order to check into allegations of procurement flaws and overpricing by Huawei.

Separately, controversy arose in the country over a tender by Huawei to lay fiber-optic cable for the national transmission backbone infrastructure project. The national backbone and e-government infrastructure was a $106 million project, funded by a loan from the EXIM Bank of China. The project was halted over controversy involving allegations of inflated costs and the use of incorrect cabling.

In Kenya, controversy surrounded the award in August 2011 to the Pan African Network Group of China for the country's digital TV signal distribution operations. Opposition Kenyan lawmakers accused the Kenyan government of flouting the tender process and knocking local companies out of the bidding process in favor of the Chinese company.