African developers favor Chinese AI models for lower costs, greater control

(ECNS) -- African developers are increasingly choosing Chinese AI models for their lower costs, relatively modest computing requirements and ability to be deployed and customized independently, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

In Kenya, Uganda and other African countries, developers, policymakers and business executives told the newspaper that cost, computing resources, data control and localization often matter more than where an AI model was developed.

In Uganda’s Mityana District, a coffee farmer uses Sunflower, a language model built on China’s open-source Qwen3, to communicate information about crop conditions and farm management. Some developers compared using Chinese open-source models to owning a house: they can download the models and build their own products on top of them, rather than continually paying for access to closed systems.

The report also said Chinese companies have provided African developers with free computing credits and technical guidance, while broader China-Africa cooperation in telecommunications and infrastructure over the past two decades has helped lay the groundwork for the adoption of Chinese AI technologies.