Ensuring the Global South has a meaningful place in the AI race

Artificial intelligence is critically important to the countries of the Global South. If deployed well, suitably customised for local circumstances, and overseen by experts in and of the Global South, AI has the potential to help all countries make massive strides in education, health care, agriculture and economic development, to name a few compelling applications
for AI. 

At the same time, the profound rivalry between the United States and China threatens to leave smaller, non-aligned countries on the sidelines of AI diffusion, let alone in mastering advanced large language models that are playing central roles in civil society and national security. The G20 has an important role in bringing the benefits of AI to a wide range of countries, and South Africa, as this year’s president of the G20, is sensibly focusing on AI development for the Global South. 

The current bifurcated geopolitical landscape for AI development, adoption and governance is evidenced by both the United States and China releasing important global AI strategy documents in July 2025. America’s AI Action Plan makes it clear that Washington wants to wage and win the war for global AI dominance. This document includes a section on countering Chinese influence in the AI space.

For its part, China’s Global AI Governance Action Plan appears to be a more collaborative document. But in the real world, Beijing’s contest with Washington over the spoils of AI is clear for all to see. Beijing has ordered China’s best-known AI success story, DeepSeek, to use Chinese-made Huawei Ascend semi-conductor chips for its next-generation development efforts. Beijing suffered a massive embarrassment when Deep
Seek, having concluded that the Huawei chips were not up to the task, reverted to Nvidia technology made in the United States and Taiwan. In effect, the current Cold War 2.0 competitive global environment between the US and China and their respective ‘teams’ is constraining the Global South from developing its own skills and capacities in AI.

Empowering the Global South through inclusive AI ecosystems

Still, South Africa, holding the 2025 G20 presidency, has promoted several useful actions to develop critical AI capacity in Africa and other Global South communities. The key exercise right now is AI diffusion, where AI applications are customised and deployed for daily use in education, health care and agriculture and in various industries in local economies. To this end, South Africa has emphasised programmes on the African continent that are establishing AI institutes and AI-related scholarships, and expanding digital literacy programmes, all of which reflect the values and concerns of African countries and their citizens. 

Going forward, US and Chinese companies, such as OpenAI and Huawei, will be very active in the Global South peddling their AI and related digital infrastructure products and services. One strategy for countries in the Global South is to weigh the long-term costs of these offerings against what might be a better fit – namely AI models from other countries that impose fewer constraints on the user, thereby allowing greater customisation of AI solutions to reflect local Global South conditions and aspirations. 

Bridging the digital divide 

Until recently it was hoped that the United Nations might be able to support the development of an independent hyperscale data centre that would make AI available to Global South countries on a preferential basis. The UN’s current financial and organisational challenges make such an offering unrealistic at this time. Other, more piecemeal solutions need to be pressed into operation in the Global South, and quickly. 

In this regard, it is worth highlighting that AI model companies such as France’s Mistral and Canada’s Cohere offer various options customised for the Global South that can bring practical, tangible benefits, without many of the strings attached to products and services from companies operating out of the US or China. Similarly, Global South countries should consider the expertise offered by Taiwan, especially through its Global Alliance for Taiwan Technology Diplomacy, which helps develop and then sustain AI projects in the Global South through training AI talent and exporting (and modifying for local application) AI best practices to universities and institutes in the Global South.

The G20 should continue to serve as a valuable forum where a more fair, less politically fraught approach to AI development and diffusion will allow countries from the Global South to find their own pace and focus in the world’s AI race. This goal is critically important to help ensure that the world’s current digital divide does not become an AI chasm.