{
  "id": 2785498,
  "title": "The African firms adopting Chinese AI as US-China rivalry intensifies",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/23/the-african-firms-adopting-chinese-ai-as-us-china-rivalry-intensifies-2785498",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-23T12:00:05.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "South China Morning Post",
    "slug": "south-china-morning-post",
    "url": "https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3364966/african-firms-adopting-chinese-ai-us-china-rivalry-intensifies"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "As the United States and China escalate their rivalry in artificial intelligence, African businesses are adopting a pragmatic approach, leveraging Chinese AI models when they offer better value or flexibility. One example is Curacel, a Nigeria-based insurtech platform that expanded its AI infrastructure to include GLM-5.3, a Chinese model developed by Zhipu AI, alongside Western providers. Curacel's CEO, Henry Mascot, explained that Chinese models deliver comparable results at lower costs for high-volume tasks such as coding, data extraction, and customer support. This multi-model approach allows Curacel to route suitable workloads to GLM-5.3 based on quality and cost without committing to a single vendor.\n\nThis trend reflects a broader shift as Chinese models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi challenge established systems from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Many Chinese models offer weights that can be downloaded and adapted locally, contributing to their growing use in Africa. Huawei Technologies, a Chinese company, has introduced a \"model as a service\" platform in South Africa, providing pay-per-token access to popular Chinese models like DeepSeek and Qwen, along with development and deployment tools.\n\nChina's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico) aims to expand its influence in Africa's digital infrastructure, technical training, and AI governance. African businesses may choose technology based on price and performance, but this could lead to growing pressure on governments to align with either Washington or Beijing. A draft State Department communication warns that countries joining Waico might be excluded from the US-led Pax Silica coalition.\n\nMichael Michie, co-founder of Nairobi-based AI consultancy EverseTech, noted that Chinese models have advanced more quickly in recent years, with significant improvements occurring within six months. EverseTech has migrated some clients to Chinese models due to their lower cost per million tokens. Another client, heavily reliant on retrieval-augmented generation, switched to a Chinese model as it could convert documents into searchable numerical representations faster and more cheaply.\n\nWhile price is a significant factor, African businesses must also consider other considerations. In Uganda, Sunflower, an AI model providing farmers with weather updates and agricultural advice in over 30 local languages, was built on Qwen3 due to its better handling of local languages compared to models from Meta Platforms or Google. Djamo, an Ivory Coast fintech company, assigns models based on the job at hand, choosing lightweight Chinese models for simple tasks like spam request handling and more advanced models for complex work such as writing or reviewing code.\n\nOpen-weight models enable African banks and fintech companies to self-host and fine-tune AI agents and data applications without sending sensitive information to external services. However, self-hosting requires computing capacity and technical expertise. Despite the potential shift in reliance from model developers to cloud platforms, chips, and technical support, sensitive data should still be kept local, regardless of geopolitical considerations.",
  "summary": "The United States may want the world to choose sides in the AI race with China, but in Africa, many businesses are pursuing a more pragmatic strategy: using Chinese models where they offer better value or flexibility, while keeping their options open. For example, when African insurtech platform Curacel expanded the range of artificial intelligence (AI) models powering its internal…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Reuters Business via SCMP",
        "title": "The African firms adopting Chinese AI as US-China rivalry intensifies",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/23/the-african-firms-adopting-chinese-ai-as-us-china-rivalry-intensifies",
        "published": "2026-08-23T12:00:05.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}