AI adoption is delayed in Africa partly due to the models’ lack of African dialects and online access through smartphones, according to mobile network association GSMA. “There are 2,000 languages in Africa and those languages are not represented in the AI models,” the group’s Director General Vivek Badrinath said at the Mobile World Congress in Rwanda this week, Bloomberg reported. He added that roughly 790 million people in Africa live in areas with internet access but don’t have smartphones. “You need to bring the unconnected onto the internet, and you need to bring content to them in their languages,” he said.
Where AI adoption has picked up on the continent, China’s DeepSeek has beat out American rivals OpenAI and Google due to its smaller energy requirements and lower cost, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, US-based AI companies are attempting to penetrate the market through lower cost subscriptions, university partnerships, and research investments.