Organizational Capacity and Resources The government continues to develop its surveillance and information flow capabilities. There is little detailed knowledge about their capacity or funding for these operations, but it does appear that Ethiopia has been receiving help from China. Chinese telecommunications firms ZTE and Huawei have reportedly been used to build both Ethiopia’s telecommunications infrastructure and its surveillance capabilities through a deal worth USD $1.6 billion (Sands, 2013). A 2015 Human Rights Watch report strongly suggested that Ethiopia has been developing a centralized surveillance system developed by ZTE to monitor mobile phone networks and the internet. The system reportedly has the ability to intercept emails and web chats (Freedom House, 2019b). These developments point to a strategy that is not focused on particular political events. The strong reactions of the government to political activism, protest and violence indicates that the country is maintaining its capacity to increase repressive activities when it deems it to be necessary. However, the extent to which this involves cyber troop capacity and maintenance is unclear. According to some of the documents leaked in late 2017, at least 13 trolls were paid a minimum of USD $300 for blog posts or Facebook messages. Whether these numbers and related activities are still on-going under the new government is unclear. Still, even after Abiy’s government took over, Ethiopia’s spy agency appears to have sent two employees to China for special training for roughly USD $12,000, and has paid roughly $1,200 to influential bloggers to write articles in favor of the government (Chala, 2018). Table 3: Cyber Troop Capacity in Ethiopia Team Size Resources Spent Activity Levels (USD) At least 13 USD $300 SM posts Permanent USD $1,200 articles by influencers Coordination Capacity Measure Coordinated/Foreign Medium training Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Figure 1: Countries identified by Citizen Lab to have been targeted by Ethiopia1 138