October 22, 2025 • 18 mins
Chinese tech companies Huawei and DeepSeek are teaming up to offer cloud computing and AI services. And they’re pitching African startups on using their offerings over their Western competitors like OpenAI in a bid to get an early foothold in the African tech scene.
In a special episode from Bloomberg’s Big Take and Next Africa podcasts, reporters Loni Prinsloo and Helen Nyambura join hosts Sarah Holder and Jennifer Zabasajja to describe the pitch, how it’s landing and what it could mean for the global AI race.
Read more: DeepSeek’s Surge in Africa Reveals China’s AI Power Grab
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Sarah Holder, host of The Big Take, and I'm
Jennifer Zabasaja, host of Bloomberg's Next Africa podcast. Today, we're
bringing you a story reported by our colleagues and newsrooms
throughout Africa and Asia.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
It's about how the AI arms race is playing out
in Africa as Chinese AI developers try to break into
the burseoning Africa tech scene. Earlier this year, a group
of tech executives from all over Africa got together at
the headquarters of a Nairobi based startup to consider a
business proposition.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So it was an early breakfast meeting and it had
a whole lot of African startup founders. And then there
was also a group from Huawei with one of the
top exigs that sort of runs sub foreign Africa's cloud services.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Loney Prince. Lou is a senior Africa reporter for Bloomberg
based in Johannesburg, and she says that Huawei Cloud Exac
was there to talk about one buzzy new company. In particular, he.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Came in with quite a strong pitch for deep Sik, saying,
you know, Deeptic is so hot that was literally his words,
deeptic is so hot. Now I want to talk about
anything else.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Deep Sik the Chinese AI platform that launched a breakthrough
reasoning model in January twenty twenty five, shocking its competition.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Deep Seek. Where did this one come from?
Speaker 4 (01:34):
The cheaper ALI model from Chinese starts up deep Seek
could frighten us big tech. Deep Siki is a Chinese
startup that's producing these large language models that offer very
high performance at a relatively low cost.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
That's Helen Yambora, Bloomberg's East Africa Bureau chief.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Deepsiki is using Wawei hardware in the ecosystem, both cheaps
and cloud, so from a political perspective, Huawei is promoting
domestic AI tools that are running on domestic hardware.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Huawei and deep Seek's parent company, high Flyer have been
collaborating since mid twenty twenty three. In addition to hosting
deep Seek on its cloud, Huawei has also started selling
its storage and computing services in a bundle with access
to deep Seek's large language model. So Huawei's exec wasn't
just hyping up how hot deep Seak is. He was
(02:26):
trying to pitch these African startups on using deep Seek's
AI platform and accessing it through Huawei's cloud servers, and
he presented a pretty compelling offer.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Basically, if you are going onto Huawei Cloud instead of
going directly onto deep Seek every day, you get two
million tokens free. So that's sort of unheard up and
then a crack pleaser.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Tokens are the unit that deep seek uses to bill
for its services. Two million free tokens can get you
a lot of deep Seak computing power. According to the
Huawei presentation, they would cover about three thousand pages of
new content generated by deep Seek's model.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Huawei is offering incentives like this to African tech companies
because they stand to gain a lot too. They're trying
to establish a crucial foothold on the continent early in
the AI race, and.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Some critics worry that deep Seek and Huawei's bet on
African AI infrastructure could have complex long term consequences, including
for data privacy. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
And this is a special co production of The Big
Take and Bloomberg's Next Africa Podcast. I'm Jennifer's Abasaga.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Today on the show, Deep Seek and Huawei's push to
dominate the artificial intelligence market in Africa.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
What it could mean for the global AI race, the
soft power balanced between the US and China, and as
efforts to influence Africa's development, industry and innovation. Africa's digital
economy is valued at about one hundred and eighty billion
(04:16):
dollars today, but by twenty fifty it's expected to swell
to seven hundred and twelve billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
For the past few years, while American AI companies have
experienced record levels of growth, African companies and African users
have been largely left behind. One reason for this is
that access to computing resources plays a big role in
African startups being able to develop their own AI models
and attract funding. The bulk of the eight hundred million
(04:49):
dollars African AI startups attracted last year went to places
on the continent that have more AI capabilities, like South Africa, Kenya,
Tunisia and Egypt.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
And Huawei's pitch for deep Seek in that Nairobi conference
room catered to the broad spectrum of AI use cases
that African entities could need, from free options for smaller
startups to private cloud systems for governments. To more compute
intensive options for app developers.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Bloomberg's Lonely Prince Lou says that in Africa, deepseek is
trying to position itself as a more flexible option than
its Western competitors.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
When it comes to Google, Gemini and Rita Lama, those
waste and models, you have quite a lot of restrictions,
licensing restrictions and take restrictions.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
AI offerings from US companies tend to be harder to customize.
They're largely not open source, but deep seek is that
means users can access the underlying code and modify the
software to suit their needs for no additional charge.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Something like that just suits the African environment much better.
Always wants the large language models, sometimes you want a
small language model for the types of adaptations that you
want to do.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
In terms of AI, one reason African startups might want
a more customizable model is because many USAI models weren't
trained on African dialects and they often fail to pick
up on cultural nuances. Using them on unfamiliar words and
situations can be expensive. They require more tokens to perform
(06:29):
those tasks. This all makes deep Seek's open source model
more appealing and using The model is also much cheaper.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
We spoke to one sort of in Nigeria called Equalize AI,
and so basically what deep seek is charging is twenty
seven usints to press a million words for a query,
and then a dollar a team for a million words.
In terms of the response that it generates.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
That's a lot less than Chat GPT, which costs more
like five dollars for a million words of processing and
fifteen dollars for a million words generated.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
That is two thousand and seven hundred dollars per month
if it us deep seek, vers is twelve thousand, five
hundred dollars if it uses chat GPT four for the
same toxic So it's a massive difference.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Deep Sex's platform is four and a half times cheaper
for Equalized AI to use, which raises the obvious question.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
What's the financial appeal for deep sek. What are they
seeing financially when it comes to some of these rois.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Look, they're still charging, so they must be playing more
of a volumes game. And in terms of volumes, that
is what Africa can offer. We have a massive amount
of young people on the continent. They're all interested in
what technology can do for them. There's a lot of
restrictions in terms of actual traditional infrastructure. So technology is
(07:57):
where everyone's sort of looking towards. So it's a longer game,
I think for deep sick more than it is for
open Ai, who is running for profits.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Basically, open Ai didn't respond to a request for comment
on the story. Meanwhile, Deep Sik's numbers game seems to
be working.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
When it comes to startups. Specifically, every African stortup we
spoke to prefer deep Sick at this point when it
comes to training their models, adapting their models. So what
we're seeing on the ground is that they are definitely
numbers in favor for deep sic currently.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And Huawei isn't just pitching startups on deep Sek, they're
also trying to get African governments to adopt their platform.
Here's Bloomberg Talent Yamburra.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
We don't have credible evidence that African governments are formally
adopting deep sick tools for their public service and official news,
but Huawei is pushing what it calls its National Government
Cloud Solution in Southern Africa. So this is platforms to
support public services and cloud infrastructure and digitization of government services.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
If deep seek were to expand into the government space,
it could be handling more sensitive data, and critics at
universities and legal firms have raised concerns about how that
data is being gathered and how it could be used.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Huawei technicians have
provided African governments with information on their political opponents. For example,
(09:36):
Huawei and the governments, though deny the claims, Deep.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Seak has already been blocked in several European countries over
data privacy concerns and what regulators say is a lack
of transparency about the relationship between the Chinese government and
companies like Huawei and deep Seek.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
One of the central concerns is that the Chinese government
could gain access to deep seek data store on Chinese servers.
Italy's Data Protection Authority asked for information on deep Seek's
data collection, use and storage policies, which deep Seek did
not produce. German regulators asked for evidence that German user
(10:15):
data sent to China was protected in line with European standards,
which Deep Seek was unable to provide.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
When asked by Bloomberg about data privacy concerns, Deep Seek
and Huawei both declined to comment. Huawei's efforts in Africa
are aligned with a similar playbook that the Chinese government
has used for over a decade as a means of
gaining soft power after the break what that approach could
mean for China's influence and its position in the global
(10:45):
AI race.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
For over a decade, the Chinese government has made a
concerted effort to invest in foreign infrastructure, increasing its influence
in developing countries. It's a strategy known as the Belt
and Road initiative.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
China is going to the developing world, especially in Africa,
and you know, extending soft power through building infrastructure, but
using technology rather than you know, the hard airports and
ports and roads, Andre Luise, This now is you know,
the software to be ahead of the yules.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
This new AI software initiative isn't technically a Belt and
Road project, but it takes a similar approach, and it's
one the Chinese government has also used in the past
to expand the reach of Chinese phone companies like Huawei
and Zte into Africa.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
The Chinese companies Juawei and Zte were not the first
on the continent, but these companies came with a cheaper,
more cost effective solution, so it's the same thing that
we're seeing with Deep Seak.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Belt and road projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti gave
China economic leverage over these developing countries. Chinese companies and
the Chinese government offered cheap loans in order to roll
out infrastructure and equipment across the continent to cement their position. Ultimately,
those nations had to majorly restructure their debt in order
(12:26):
to repay their loans.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Other nations who weren't able to pay back their loans,
like Sri Lanka, have had to turn over control of
their infrastructure to China. When it comes to Huawei and
deep Seek, the leverage these companies could have is access
to information.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
It's all about capturing the vast amount of data that
will shape AI in the future. Some critics are worried
that this will elcho that built and road where we
saw China forcing some poor countries to handle over critical
infrastructure to pay for all those projects. So we don't
(13:03):
know how these might pan out for African companies and
governments in future in terms of cost.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And there are other side effects that come from relying
too heavily on one country's digital infrastructure. For example, for
the past two years, to prevent cheating during China's national
university entrance exams, China has restricted certain technical capabilities of
domestic tech companies.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Ali Baba, Black Dance, Taintsined and Deepseek, whose service are
all located in China. They disabled things like the image
recognition and the instant Q and A features on sort
of consumer facing products to prevent cheating.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But the move didn't just impact Chinese students.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
We also saw then in Lagos in Nairobi who all
experienced slowdowns in terms of service interruptions and you can't
do anything about that.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And then there are the privacy concerns. Most big Western
AI models are supposed to comply with European laws governing
transparency around data collection and processing, but deep Seek's chapbot
does not. Instead, it typically stores user data on servers
in China, which under Chinese law, could be accessed by
(14:18):
the Chinese government. And while several European countries have taken
steps to curb deep Seek adoption, African countries have not.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
I think most countries are really you know, at the
starting stage of developing the regulation and so on, so
there's a lot of adoption without the legal background without
the regulatory backbone to cover that the technology has sort
of front run the regulation, which might be a problem.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Then there's the looming geopolitical backdrop to this. Bloomberg's Helen
Yamburra told me that if Africa nations and tech companies
start relying too heavily on Chinese tech, they could get
caught in the crossfires of the US China trade war.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
For instance, if the US government tries to disrupt China's
AI capabilities by limiting access to chips or ratcheting up terrace,
that could also impact Africa's AI capabilities.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
The sticks are just really too high for a single
country to rely on just one country, whether it's the
US or China.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
The US has tried to pursue its own tech infrastructure
projects in Africa in the past.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And who big deals being announced in thin specifically, there
was a big AI data center being announced of more
than a billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
But under the Trump administration those efforts have stalled.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And that's opened the way again for China. China, as
we said, has been here for a long time. That've
been in wasting for twenty years, so that they do
own a lot of the equipment in our five G,
in our fiber, in our data centers in the US
companies that are here. A lot of them sort of
have set up shop in South Africa and some in
(16:12):
Kenya and some in Nigeria, but they don't really advance
to other African countries. And as we know, there's fifty
four of them. So China has really played the game
also in smaller countries.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And in part because of that dynamic, the expansion of
Chinese AI tools in Africa hasn't been met with the
same suspicion as it has in European countries or the
United States, because Lonei says, many people in Africa are
just as skeptical of US tech.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
In Africa, people don't always mistrust the East versus the West.
Many also distrust the West in terms of privacy and
you know tike and all of that. So African general
has a better relationship with China than a europe for instance.
But yeah, I would just I would like to just
(17:06):
see whether this adoption of deep seek in the sort
of space continues.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
For now, Alen says she's watching to see how Africa's
AI industry develops.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
What will be interesting is to see whether Africa can
come up with its own, you know, homegrown AI industry.
There's very many hurdles to this. It doesn't have the
money that you know, China or the US will throw
at AI. It also doesn't have the skilled labor to
do this or the infrastructure. But it would be good
(17:38):
for Africa to be at least to try for some
independence on this front.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I'm Sarah Holder and I'm Jennifer's Abisada with Next Africa.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Follow the Next Africa podcast now and join them every
Friday on Apple, podcast, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you listen.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast Offer.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
If you liked this episode, make sure to follow and
review The Big Take or Next Africa wherever you listen
to podcasts. It helps people find the shows
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Sarah Holder, host of The Big Take, and I'm
Jennifer Zabasaja, host of Bloomberg's Next Africa podcast. Today, we're
bringing you a story reported by our colleagues and newsrooms
throughout Africa and Asia.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
It's about how the AI arms race is playing out
in Africa as Chinese AI developers try to break into
the burseoning Africa tech scene. Earlier this year, a group
of tech executives from all over Africa got together at
the headquarters of a Nairobi based startup to consider a
business proposition.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So it was an early breakfast meeting and it had
a whole lot of African startup founders. And then there
was also a group from Huawei with one of the
top exigs that sort of runs sub foreign Africa's cloud services.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Loney Prince. Lou is a senior Africa reporter for Bloomberg
based in Johannesburg, and she says that Huawei Cloud Exac
was there to talk about one buzzy new company. In particular, he.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Came in with quite a strong pitch for deep Sik, saying,
you know, Deeptic is so hot that was literally his words,
deeptic is so hot. Now I want to talk about
anything else.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Deep Sik the Chinese AI platform that launched a breakthrough
reasoning model in January twenty twenty five, shocking its competition.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Deep Seek. Where did this one come from?
Speaker 4 (01:34):
The cheaper ALI model from Chinese starts up deep Seek
could frighten us big tech. Deep Siki is a Chinese
startup that's producing these large language models that offer very
high performance at a relatively low cost.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
That's Helen Yambora, Bloomberg's East Africa Bureau chief.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Deepsiki is using Wawei hardware in the ecosystem, both cheaps
and cloud, so from a political perspective, Huawei is promoting
domestic AI tools that are running on domestic hardware.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Huawei and deep Seek's parent company, high Flyer have been
collaborating since mid twenty twenty three. In addition to hosting
deep Seek on its cloud, Huawei has also started selling
its storage and computing services in a bundle with access
to deep Seek's large language model. So Huawei's exec wasn't
just hyping up how hot deep Seak is. He was
(02:26):
trying to pitch these African startups on using deep Seek's
AI platform and accessing it through Huawei's cloud servers, and
he presented a pretty compelling offer.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Basically, if you are going onto Huawei Cloud instead of
going directly onto deep Seek every day, you get two
million tokens free. So that's sort of unheard up and
then a crack pleaser.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Tokens are the unit that deep seek uses to bill
for its services. Two million free tokens can get you
a lot of deep Seak computing power. According to the
Huawei presentation, they would cover about three thousand pages of
new content generated by deep Seek's model.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Huawei is offering incentives like this to African tech companies
because they stand to gain a lot too. They're trying
to establish a crucial foothold on the continent early in
the AI race, and.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Some critics worry that deep Seek and Huawei's bet on
African AI infrastructure could have complex long term consequences, including
for data privacy. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
And this is a special co production of The Big
Take and Bloomberg's Next Africa Podcast. I'm Jennifer's Abasaga.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Today on the show, Deep Seek and Huawei's push to
dominate the artificial intelligence market in Africa.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
What it could mean for the global AI race, the
soft power balanced between the US and China, and as
efforts to influence Africa's development, industry and innovation. Africa's digital
economy is valued at about one hundred and eighty billion
(04:16):
dollars today, but by twenty fifty it's expected to swell
to seven hundred and twelve billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
For the past few years, while American AI companies have
experienced record levels of growth, African companies and African users
have been largely left behind. One reason for this is
that access to computing resources plays a big role in
African startups being able to develop their own AI models
and attract funding. The bulk of the eight hundred million
(04:49):
dollars African AI startups attracted last year went to places
on the continent that have more AI capabilities, like South Africa, Kenya,
Tunisia and Egypt.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
And Huawei's pitch for deep Seek in that Nairobi conference
room catered to the broad spectrum of AI use cases
that African entities could need, from free options for smaller
startups to private cloud systems for governments. To more compute
intensive options for app developers.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Bloomberg's Lonely Prince Lou says that in Africa, deepseek is
trying to position itself as a more flexible option than
its Western competitors.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
When it comes to Google, Gemini and Rita Lama, those
waste and models, you have quite a lot of restrictions,
licensing restrictions and take restrictions.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
AI offerings from US companies tend to be harder to customize.
They're largely not open source, but deep seek is that
means users can access the underlying code and modify the
software to suit their needs for no additional charge.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Something like that just suits the African environment much better.
Always wants the large language models, sometimes you want a
small language model for the types of adaptations that you
want to do.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
In terms of AI, one reason African startups might want
a more customizable model is because many USAI models weren't
trained on African dialects and they often fail to pick
up on cultural nuances. Using them on unfamiliar words and
situations can be expensive. They require more tokens to perform
(06:29):
those tasks. This all makes deep Seek's open source model
more appealing and using The model is also much cheaper.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
We spoke to one sort of in Nigeria called Equalize AI,
and so basically what deep seek is charging is twenty
seven usints to press a million words for a query,
and then a dollar a team for a million words.
In terms of the response that it generates.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
That's a lot less than Chat GPT, which costs more
like five dollars for a million words of processing and
fifteen dollars for a million words generated.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
That is two thousand and seven hundred dollars per month
if it us deep seek, vers is twelve thousand, five
hundred dollars if it uses chat GPT four for the
same toxic So it's a massive difference.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Deep Sex's platform is four and a half times cheaper
for Equalized AI to use, which raises the obvious question.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
What's the financial appeal for deep sek. What are they
seeing financially when it comes to some of these rois.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Look, they're still charging, so they must be playing more
of a volumes game. And in terms of volumes, that
is what Africa can offer. We have a massive amount
of young people on the continent. They're all interested in
what technology can do for them. There's a lot of
restrictions in terms of actual traditional infrastructure. So technology is
(07:57):
where everyone's sort of looking towards. So it's a longer game,
I think for deep sick more than it is for
open Ai, who is running for profits.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Basically, open Ai didn't respond to a request for comment
on the story. Meanwhile, Deep Sik's numbers game seems to
be working.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
When it comes to startups. Specifically, every African stortup we
spoke to prefer deep Sick at this point when it
comes to training their models, adapting their models. So what
we're seeing on the ground is that they are definitely
numbers in favor for deep sic currently.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And Huawei isn't just pitching startups on deep Sek, they're
also trying to get African governments to adopt their platform.
Here's Bloomberg Talent Yamburra.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
We don't have credible evidence that African governments are formally
adopting deep sick tools for their public service and official news,
but Huawei is pushing what it calls its National Government
Cloud Solution in Southern Africa. So this is platforms to
support public services and cloud infrastructure and digitization of government services.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
If deep seek were to expand into the government space,
it could be handling more sensitive data, and critics at
universities and legal firms have raised concerns about how that
data is being gathered and how it could be used.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Huawei technicians have
provided African governments with information on their political opponents. For example,
(09:36):
Huawei and the governments, though deny the claims, Deep.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Seak has already been blocked in several European countries over
data privacy concerns and what regulators say is a lack
of transparency about the relationship between the Chinese government and
companies like Huawei and deep Seek.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
One of the central concerns is that the Chinese government
could gain access to deep seek data store on Chinese servers.
Italy's Data Protection Authority asked for information on deep Seek's
data collection, use and storage policies, which deep Seek did
not produce. German regulators asked for evidence that German user
(10:15):
data sent to China was protected in line with European standards,
which Deep Seek was unable to provide.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
When asked by Bloomberg about data privacy concerns, Deep Seek
and Huawei both declined to comment. Huawei's efforts in Africa
are aligned with a similar playbook that the Chinese government
has used for over a decade as a means of
gaining soft power after the break what that approach could
mean for China's influence and its position in the global
(10:45):
AI race.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
For over a decade, the Chinese government has made a
concerted effort to invest in foreign infrastructure, increasing its influence
in developing countries. It's a strategy known as the Belt
and Road initiative.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
China is going to the developing world, especially in Africa,
and you know, extending soft power through building infrastructure, but
using technology rather than you know, the hard airports and
ports and roads, Andre Luise, This now is you know,
the software to be ahead of the yules.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
This new AI software initiative isn't technically a Belt and
Road project, but it takes a similar approach, and it's
one the Chinese government has also used in the past
to expand the reach of Chinese phone companies like Huawei
and Zte into Africa.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
The Chinese companies Juawei and Zte were not the first
on the continent, but these companies came with a cheaper,
more cost effective solution, so it's the same thing that
we're seeing with Deep Seak.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Belt and road projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti gave
China economic leverage over these developing countries. Chinese companies and
the Chinese government offered cheap loans in order to roll
out infrastructure and equipment across the continent to cement their position. Ultimately,
those nations had to majorly restructure their debt in order
(12:26):
to repay their loans.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Other nations who weren't able to pay back their loans,
like Sri Lanka, have had to turn over control of
their infrastructure to China. When it comes to Huawei and
deep Seek, the leverage these companies could have is access
to information.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
It's all about capturing the vast amount of data that
will shape AI in the future. Some critics are worried
that this will elcho that built and road where we
saw China forcing some poor countries to handle over critical
infrastructure to pay for all those projects. So we don't
(13:03):
know how these might pan out for African companies and
governments in future in terms of cost.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And there are other side effects that come from relying
too heavily on one country's digital infrastructure. For example, for
the past two years, to prevent cheating during China's national
university entrance exams, China has restricted certain technical capabilities of
domestic tech companies.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Ali Baba, Black Dance, Taintsined and Deepseek, whose service are
all located in China. They disabled things like the image
recognition and the instant Q and A features on sort
of consumer facing products to prevent cheating.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But the move didn't just impact Chinese students.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
We also saw then in Lagos in Nairobi who all
experienced slowdowns in terms of service interruptions and you can't
do anything about that.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And then there are the privacy concerns. Most big Western
AI models are supposed to comply with European laws governing
transparency around data collection and processing, but deep Seek's chapbot
does not. Instead, it typically stores user data on servers
in China, which under Chinese law, could be accessed by
(14:18):
the Chinese government. And while several European countries have taken
steps to curb deep Seek adoption, African countries have not.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
I think most countries are really you know, at the
starting stage of developing the regulation and so on, so
there's a lot of adoption without the legal background without
the regulatory backbone to cover that the technology has sort
of front run the regulation, which might be a problem.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Then there's the looming geopolitical backdrop to this. Bloomberg's Helen
Yamburra told me that if Africa nations and tech companies
start relying too heavily on Chinese tech, they could get
caught in the crossfires of the US China trade war.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
For instance, if the US government tries to disrupt China's
AI capabilities by limiting access to chips or ratcheting up terrace,
that could also impact Africa's AI capabilities.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
The sticks are just really too high for a single
country to rely on just one country, whether it's the
US or China.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
The US has tried to pursue its own tech infrastructure
projects in Africa in the past.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And who big deals being announced in thin specifically, there
was a big AI data center being announced of more
than a billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
But under the Trump administration those efforts have stalled.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And that's opened the way again for China. China, as
we said, has been here for a long time. That've
been in wasting for twenty years, so that they do
own a lot of the equipment in our five G,
in our fiber, in our data centers in the US
companies that are here. A lot of them sort of
have set up shop in South Africa and some in
(16:12):
Kenya and some in Nigeria, but they don't really advance
to other African countries. And as we know, there's fifty
four of them. So China has really played the game
also in smaller countries.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And in part because of that dynamic, the expansion of
Chinese AI tools in Africa hasn't been met with the
same suspicion as it has in European countries or the
United States, because Lonei says, many people in Africa are
just as skeptical of US tech.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
In Africa, people don't always mistrust the East versus the West.
Many also distrust the West in terms of privacy and
you know tike and all of that. So African general
has a better relationship with China than a europe for instance.
But yeah, I would just I would like to just
(17:06):
see whether this adoption of deep seek in the sort
of space continues.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
For now, Alen says she's watching to see how Africa's
AI industry develops.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
What will be interesting is to see whether Africa can
come up with its own, you know, homegrown AI industry.
There's very many hurdles to this. It doesn't have the
money that you know, China or the US will throw
at AI. It also doesn't have the skilled labor to
do this or the infrastructure. But it would be good
(17:38):
for Africa to be at least to try for some
independence on this front.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I'm Sarah Holder and I'm Jennifer's Abisada with Next Africa.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Follow the Next Africa podcast now and join them every
Friday on Apple, podcast, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you listen.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast Offer.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
If you liked this episode, make sure to follow and
review The Big Take or Next Africa wherever you listen
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Host
Jennifer Zabasajja
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