Chinese AI gains ground in Africa
Experts note that Chinese technology companies are increasingly becoming significant contributors to Africa’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, primarily through the promotion of open-source technology.
Wu Chenglin, the founder and CEO of DeepWisdom, based in Xiamen, Fujian province, stated that this involves the adoption of open-source technology and broadening access to sophisticated digital tools across developing markets, including those in Africa.
These models enable developers and businesses to download model weights, implement them locally, adjust architectures, and train systems with their proprietary data, thereby making AI more attainable than conventional closed-source alternatives.
He noted that Chinese technology firms have increasingly adopted open-collaboration in recent years. Major companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and ByteDance have either launched or backed open-source initiatives.
Wu explained that this method significantly lowers the expenses and technical obstacles associated with developing AI solutions, empowering entrepreneurs, small enterprises, and independent developers to explore the technology.
In Africa, some developers are already leveraging Chinese open-source models, such as DeepWisdom’s Atoms model, to create Yotu Health. This mobile AI co-pilot assists users in monitoring blood sugar, managing medication timetables, and overseeing their daily well-being.
Harun Katusya, a data scientist based in Kenya, observed that U.S. companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, along with Chinese model developers including DeepSeek, are engaged in a wider competition to define the global AI ecosystem’s future. “Africa sits at the center of this emerging contest because it is a massive untapped digital market, and many institutions are rapidly digitizing without strong AI governance frameworks,” he said.
Lawrence Nderu, a research fellow in the Department of Computing at Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, highlighted that a primary benefit of Chinese open-weight AI models, when compared to numerous closed alternatives, is the significant degree of control they provide.
“With open-weight models, African teams can host systems locally, reduce dependency, protect sensitive data, fine-tune domain-specific datasets, and build solutions that reflect African priorities rather than simply consuming AI products designed for other markets,” Nderu said.
He emphasized that this level of control is crucial in various sectors, such as healthcare, education, finance, agriculture, and public administration, where trust, adherence to regulations, and long-term viability are of utmost importance.
“We are now talking about AI sovereignty, which is part of our AI strategy in Kenya,” he said, adding that African countries should use open-weight models as a foundation for building their own AI capabilities.
“We should use these models as scaffolding to train our researchers, build our datasets, develop African language benchmarks, create domain-specific models, and ultimately produce AI systems that are owned, governed and sustained by African institutions,” he said.
Nderu asserted that the true potential is not merely in adopting Chinese AI, but in transforming it into a driving force for AI solutions that are developed, governed, and pertinent to Africa.
Nevertheless, he warned that policymakers and institutions need to meticulously evaluate open-source models concerning data protection.
The African Development Bank Group estimates that if artificial intelligence is developed and implemented inclusively, it could contribute as much as $1 trillion to the GDP of African economies by 2035, which is almost one-third of the continent’s present economic production.
