As Africa races towards its AI revolution, China is with it each step of the way

Yahoo

01-03-2025

With Chinese start-up DeepSeek poised to help accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) across Africa, China has cemented its presence in the continent's digital transformation, experts have said.
But, they added, as Africa's digital landscape speed along, it had also pushed policymakers to build governance frameworks around the new technology.
Through the Digital Silk Road, an initiative Beijing unveiled in 2015, Chinese enterprises have been constructing digital infrastructure, including submarine and terrestrial cables, 5G networks and data centres, said Yu Jia, senior operations officer of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University.
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"Thereby they laid the critical hardware foundation for AI development and adoption across the continent," she said.
Africa is China's second-largest overseas contracted engineering market. Over the past decade, Chinese enterprises have signed engineering deals in Africa totalling more than US$700 billion, according to China's State Council.
As of August 2024, 52 African countries, as well as the African Union, have struck agreements with China through its Belt and Road Initiative.
"The adoption and development of AI in Africa is still in its early stages, but it has already demonstrated significant potential, particularly in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, education and finance," Yu said.
According to a recent assessment by Global System for Mobile Communications, Africa represents only 2.5 per cent of the worldwide AI market, yet estimates suggest that the technology could increase the continent's economy by US$2.9 trillion by 2030 - the equivalent of increasing annual gross domestic product growth by 3 per cent.
It is an emerging market that is expanding rapidly: there are reportedly more than 2,400 companies specialising in the industry as of 2024, most of which are in South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria.
South Africa leads the continent in terms of the number of AI companies and the scale of financing, according to experts. In 2022, the country established a national institute to support AI applications in mining, government data cloud systems, automotive infrastructure and agriculture.
Most African governments see AI as a tool to "leapfrog" national development. Kenddrick Chan, head of the digital international relations project at foreign policy think tank LSE IDEAS, said they did have the potential to do that.
For example, about half of the continent had jumped straight to mobile banking instead of traditional banking, he said.
"One could argue that when it comes to AI, Africa might be able to bypass outdated technologies and implement AI-driven solutions faster as it does not have legacy systems that are entrenched," Chan said.
"All of this, however, requires significant political will and coordinated government action if such potential is to be realised."
A large pool of talent is Africa's other strength, Chan noted.
"Africa also has the youngest population in the world, which means that it will have a young, tech-savvy workforce that can be trained to use AI tools to augment and value-add to their work."
But there are other significant challenges Africa is facing in its AI development. These include an unstable power supply, relatively low computing capacity and a lack of advanced computing centres and equipment, according to Yu.
"Africa lacks a complete AI industry chain, with almost no presence in core areas such as chip development and algorithm innovation, making it highly reliant on external technologies and products," she said.
AI could be a powerful tool in medical care throughout remote regions of Africa. Photo: Xinhua alt=AI could be a powerful tool in medical care throughout remote regions of Africa. Photo: Xinhua>
Lacking sufficient and cohesive data also constrained AI model training and expansions of applications, according to Iginio Gagliardone, a professor specialising in the politics of technology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
"We're talking about a huge continent with 54 countries, where hundreds of different languages are being spoken and these languages might be spoken in ways that leave very little trace online," he said.
The emergence of DeepSeek opens a bigger window of opportunity for China-Africa cooperation, potentially driving significant AI advancements in sectors such as agriculture and healthcare, Yu said.
"China-Africa collaboration in advancing AI applications can significantly bolster precision agriculture, climate monitoring and pest prediction," she said.
"Traditional Chinese medical aid teams in Africa can leverage AI to facilitate remote diagnosis, disease prediction and public health management. AI-assisted diagnostic tools and infectious disease surveillance systems can help address critical resource gaps."
The very nature of the open-source model has also pushed African policymakers to address concerns over data privacy and AI safety, Chan noted.
"Open-source AI can also be repurposed for malicious use such as generating misinformation," he said. "This is where African governments need to ensure that they have the right policies in place to make sure that the malicious use of AI does not occur and that there are mechanisms for AI auditing and oversight."
Kenya is preparing to join a growing number of jurisdictions worldwide that are imposing restrictions on the use of their citizens' data and information collected within their borders to train AI models, particularly by foreign entities.
The Moroccan government is also examining a draft law aimed at managing AI applications and ensuring their ethical and safe use.
Last April, China's top cyberspace regulator pledged to deepen the push for artificial intelligence governance with African countries at a China-Africa internet forum held in Xiamen.
Amid the escalating AI competition between China and America, particularly during Donald Trump's presidency, African countries might lean slightly more towards China, Gagliardone noted.
"China has shown greater consistency over time with less inclination to lecture others as compared to the United States," he said.
Steadily climbing in the past two decades, Chinese foreign direct investment flows to Africa have exceeded those from the US since 2013, with American investment generally declining since 2010, according to official state data.
African countries have been able to develop strong ties with a variety of partners across the globe, without having to lock themselves in, Gagliardone said.
An example would be Africa's response when Trump demanded US allies join his Huawei Technologies blacklist during his first term.
The UK and Australia complied with this, to some extent, but African countries, including US ally Kenya, maintained their neutrality and continued the partnerships anyway. There were no repercussions for ignoring the Huawei ban.
"This Trump government seems more vindictive than the previous one. We will see what happens, but certainly in Africa there's not a sense that we need to take sides," Gagliardone said.
Bitange Ndemo, Kenya's ambassador to Belgium and the European Union, noted that the current Trump administration has adopted an inward-looking approach, prioritising its "America first" policy.
"It's going to be contentious between the superpowers, but right now Africa cannot be the battleground because the US is looking inward and becoming what we call insular," Ndemo said.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.