Former Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) Erastus Mwencha on Tuesday denounced a French media report that alleged China was spying on the AU headquarters.
Mwencha, who had been at the helm of the pan-African bloc for two terms since January 2008 to 2016 in which the "spying" the report alleged had occurred, said the report is untrue for various reasons, mainly for its timing, parties that are against to the growing Africa-China partnership, and the content of the report.
The French newspaper Le Monde said China had bugged the building it had built and gifted to the AU in 2012 and had been downloading data from servers in the building.
Mwencha told Xinhua on Tuesday that "the timing of the story is highly suspected."
"A very respected newspaper that publishes such a sensational story on the eve of the summit?" Mwencha asked, adding that "I really don't see anything that this newspaper printed for."
"As for me, I will denounce it for the content that it says," he said.
"Obviously, everybody knows that at the moment there are a number of other parties in the world who are not comfortable with the close relationship between China and Africa" and "would of course want to see this relationship not going forward," he said.
"Africa is not naive to the fact of its history and where we come from and Africa is not naive to the current challenges we have and where we are going," he added.
"We know how we have been partnering with China in many ways," Mwencha stressed.
"What is there first of all to spy? What secrets are here that somebody would spy about?" Mwencha asked.
Asked whether such reports could have an impact on the partnership between Africa and China, Mwencha said that "I can tell you right away that it will not affect (the partnership) and there are a number of reasons why it will not."
African leaders, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki, have also dismissed the French media report.
"There's nothing to be spied (on) because (the) China-Africa relationship is very strategic, comprehensive," Desalegn said on the sidelines of the 30th AU summit on Sunday.
AUC Chairperson Moussa Faki also told a press conference at the end of the summit that he did not find any sign that the AU building was being spied upon.
Kuang Weilin, head of the Chinese Mission to the African Union, also called the report "sensational," "preposterous" and "totally untrue."
According to Kuang, the AU headquarters is a very important project donated by China to support the pan-African bloc.
