- DeepSeek – a large language model (LLM) from China developed by High-Flyer – is making a breakthrough by entering Africa via Huawei Cloud. Its advantages: many times cheaper than OpenAI, energy-saving, runs on low-cost hardware, opening up AI access opportunities for millions of people.
- Huawei has integrated DeepSeek into its hosting and cloud computing service package, offering multiple access tiers: free, hourly charge, or installation of a private cloud system for government agencies.
- Shikoh Gitau – CEO of Qhala (Kenya) – stated that DeepSeek is “super cheap,” helping startups switch internal chatbots from Western models like Claude, Gemini, and Llama to the Chinese platform.
- Unlike OpenAI or Google, China chooses an open-source AI approach: allowing code modification, royalty-free, focusing on emerging markets like a digital version of the “Belt and Road Initiative.”
- Africa’s digital economy is only valued at about $180 billion, compared to OpenAI’s valuation of $500 billion. But China expects to harvest “influence, data, and long-term customers.”
- In Nigeria, EqualyzAI uses DeepSeek to train small specialized models for its 240 million population, processing medical, financial data, and Yoruba, Hausa languages. DeepSeek Chat costs $0.27 per 1 million input tokens and $1.10 per 1 million output tokens – 5–10 times cheaper than GPT-4o.
- Huawei offers 2 million free tokens per day for DeepSeek users. While GPT-4o makes the cost of training small models up to $12,500/month, DeepSeek only costs about $2,700.
- Startups like Innova (Kenya), Cereloop (Nigeria), Angani, Pure Infrastructure, etc., are all using DeepSeek for education, finance, and economic data analysis.
- However, experts are concerned about security: DeepSeek stores user data (including location, chat history) on servers in China. The application is banned in Italy, Germany, and was previously removed in South Korea for violating privacy rights.
- US officials warn that using Huawei Ascend chips could violate export control orders, raising concerns that Africa could face “digital lock-in” if the trade war escalates.
📌 DeepSeek is making a breakthrough by entering Africa via Huawei Cloud thanks to being many times cheaper than OpenAI, energy-saving, running on low-cost hardware, opening up AI access opportunities for millions of people. Huawei has integrated DeepSeek into its hosting and cloud computing service package, offering multiple access tiers: free, hourly charge, or installation of a private cloud system for government agencies. Unlike OpenAI or Google, China chooses an open-source AI approach: allowing code modification, royalty-free, focusing on emerging markets like a digital version of the “Belt and Road Initiative.”
