Chinese AI models gain ground in Africa over US tech giants

Chinese artificial intelligence models, including Qwen, DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, are gaining significant traction across Africa, challenging the dominance of American technology giants like Google and Meta.

In Uganda, the company Sunflower utilizes Alibaba’s Qwen model to provide weather forecasts and agricultural advice in over 30 local languages. These Chinese models have proven more effective than Western alternatives, which often struggle with less digitized local languages. This linguistic advantage, combined with lower costs and the ability to download and adapt models for local servers, makes Chinese AI highly attractive to African startups and enterprises.

In Kenya, Chinese systems are being deployed to digitize legal archives and automate banking services. In Nigeria, the insurance platform Curacel uses the GLM model for repetitive tasks such as coding and data extraction, while reserving Western models for more complex reasoning tasks. This trend suggests a shift toward a dual-supply ecosystem where African businesses select tools based on specific cost and performance needs rather than a total abandonment of Western technology.