When Ernest Mwebaze built Sunflower LLM, a language model that can use 31 of Uganda’s languages, he didn’t turn to Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI. He built it on Qwen 3, a Chinese open-source model developed by Alibaba.
It’s a choice shared across the continent. African developers have turned overwhelmingly to Chinese platforms—like DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi—to build artificial intelligence models in their own languages. Chinese platforms are faster and cheaper to train, as well as open-source, which is an attractive combination for developers, according to Shikoh Gitau, a leading researcher in African AI and CEO of Qhala.
When Ernest Mwebaze built Sunflower LLM, a language model that can use 31 of Uganda’s languages, he didn’t turn to Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI. He built it on Qwen 3, a Chinese open-source model developed by Alibaba.
It’s a choice shared across the continent. African developers have turned overwhelmingly to Chinese platforms—like DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi—to build artificial intelligence models in their own languages. Chinese platforms are faster and cheaper to train, as well as open-source, which is an attractive combination for developers, according to Shikoh Gitau, a leading researcher in African AI and CEO of Qhala.
