In Nairobi’s Westlands tech hub, an AI engineer squints at his computer screen, awaiting a shipment of GPUs ordered four months ago from Shenzhen, China. With each passing week, the container’s journey across trade bottlenecks feels less like a logistical hiccup and more like a casualty of geopolitical conflict. Around him, the hum of ambition is increasingly muffled by something Africa didn’t start—but must now survive: the global trade tariff wars.
While Africa seeks to join the AI revolution on its own terms, it’s finding its path blocked by a new form of economic imperialism—this time not from colonial Europe, but from the tariff trenches between China and the United States. From critical hardware shortages to rising cloud service costs, Africa’s AI journey is being slowed by a game it didn’t sign up to play.
At the heart of AI development lies computational power—and that requires chips. High-end graphics processing units (GPUs), which train machine learning models, are produced mainly by American companies like NVIDIA and AMD, often manufactured in Taiwan or China. But U.S. sanctions and export controls targeting Chinese tech firms like Huawei and SMIC have ricocheted across the global supply chain.
For African innovators, this means delayed shipments, limited access to cutting-edge semiconductors, and rising prices. AI startups in Africa report paying more for GPUs than they did two years ago. Nigerian AI researchers now rely on outdated TensorFlow libraries because their universities cannot afford newer, compatible hardware. What was once a technical challenge has now become a geopolitical one.
By 2030, AI is projected to contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy, according to PwC. The greatest economic gains from AI will be in China (26% boost to GDP) and North America (14.5% boost), equivalent to a total of $10.7 trillion and accounting for almost 70% of the global economic impact. Africa, according to projections, will have the least contribution to AI by 2030, with global trade tariffs further pushing Africa’s AI potential down.
America’s First AI Strategy
Significant implications from the US are already being felt in the advancement of AI as America hosts major tech giants leading in global AI development such as Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, and Apple.
The American AI policy seeks to position America as a global leader in AI, support American innovation, while creating mutual reciprocity and economical gains with trading partners.
The introduced Executive order 14179 on removing barriers to American leadership in Artificial Intelligence, highlights its purpose of the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.
Trump’s administration had announced trade tariffs towards other economies globally. America’s trade is depicted as moving towards bilateral negotiations versus multilateralism in its trade agreements.
This strategy is widely supported by the America’s top AI companies. Open AI’s CEO stated that “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI,” said Altman, capturing the zeitgeist of the moment. “I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”
OpenAI’s proposal for the U.S. AI Action Plan is to foster a regulatory strategy that ensures the freedom to innovate, establishment of an export control strategy that exports democratic AI, creation of a copyright strategy that promotes the freedom to learn, promotion of a strategy to seize the infrastructure opportunity to drive growth, leading an ambitious government adoption strategy.
The recent implementation of tariffs has seen a shift on the effects of tariffs on the development of AI in Africa. In international trade, the tariffs usually introduce financial friction, supply chain volatility, and strategic misalignment that threaten to slow down the AI advancement. It is quite normal that policymakers face pressure to balance protectionism with incentives that maintain technological leadership.
While some of the most intense tariffs are officially under a 90-day pause, however, a 10% tariff on most imports is still in effect, as is a hefty 145% import tariff on Chinese goods. The turbulent tariff rollout and subsequent pullback have rattled the stock market and confused economists and business leaders.
According to a white paper published recently by Pangea and Acre Impact Capital, Trump’s administration is significantly shaping policies on debt restructuring, loan conditionalities, and financial support packages for African countries.
“Volatile US trade and foreign policy under Trump can disrupt Africa’s economic planning and ability to secure US preference. Sudden shifts in tariffs, investment priorities, and trade deals will erode trust, making African governments hesitant to prioritise US partnerships. The risk of policy reversals between administrations further weakens long-term credibility, complicating Africa’s trade and investment strategies.,” says The Impact of Political Change on Africa’s Credit Outlook in 2025 report. “Global tariff uncertainties and evolving trade policies are poised
to increase volatility in African financial markets, affecting both domestic growth
and long-term investor confidence.”
Africa’s contribution to AI
In Africa, there has been progress and headway made through the AI policy implementation and discussions. In 2025, there was the Inaugural Global AI Summit on Africa that was held in Kigali on 3 April.
The Kigali summit re-positioned Africa’s commitment to Africa’s AI future and vision as enshrined in the Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence. The strategy strengthens Africa’s commitment to an Africa-centric, development-focused approach to AI, promoting ethical, responsible, and equitable practices.
Zindi, the leading AI training firm in Africa, has built a fast-growing community of over 85,000 data scientists from across the continent. This network serves as a pipeline of talent for employers looking to hire skilled AI practitioners. By offering visibility and recognition, Zindi helps local talent get discovered and hired both locally and internationally.
But as developed countries seek to advance their technological advancement, the Global South (118 countries), is missing from global AI governance discussions. The AI power is concentrated in the United States and China, hence widening the digital divide. The leading AI economies contribute 40 per cent of the world’s private investment in research and development, according ot the Technology and Innovation Report 2025.
Africa plays a significant role as an AI consumer, implementer and contributor. Investments in AI are gaining momentum across Africa, with the AI market in Africa projected to reach $4.92 billion by 2025, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.43% from 2025 to 2030.
Startups like Aerobotics (South Africa) and Agrix Tech (Cameroon) use AI and computer vision to improve crop yields and detect pests. Kenya’s DataScience Africa community works on predictive health systems, while mPharma (Ghana) uses AI to manage drug inventories and reduce medical costs.
The African Union (AU) is formulating a Continental AI Strategy, expected to guide member states on AI governance, education, data sovereignty, and responsible innovation. Countries like Rwanda, Egypt, Kenya, and Tunisia are also drafting national AI strategies aligned with development goals.
But African governments themselves are not doing enough to take AI mainstream, according to Alex Tsado, the co-founder of the Alliance for Africa’s Intelligence (AAI) and Ahura AI. “Our governments have to change. Our private sectors have to change and do the opposite, which starts by building these fast AI supercomputers, enabling the environment, and removing import taxes,” Tsado told Impact AI News. “When you train enough people, our people will build AI solutions that solve African problems. These will create new markets that we are not even aware of right now.”
Africa’s AI Pace Slowed Down By Tariffs
President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs on imported goods are significantly increasing the costs and complexity of AI development in Africa, undermining Africa’s competitive edge in the global AI race.
The key impact has been increased infrastructure costs as building AI data centers requires specialized servers, cooling systems, and power infrastructure will become 20-25% more expensive due to tariffs on imported components.
It’s not just hardware. These trade disputes have prompted regulatory overreach that stifles open-source collaboration. U.S.-China tensions have led to restrictions on GitHub usage in sanctioned countries, which affected developers in nations like South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria who rely on the platform to build and share AI models. In turn, African AI projects often stall not due to lack of talent—but lack of tools.
Simultaneously, global cloud service providers are adjusting their pricing models in response to tariffs and sanctions. This is being felt across Africa, where startups operating on razor-thin budgets can no longer afford the data storage or compute time needed to scale AI solutions for agriculture, healthcare, or fintech. Tariffs applied to cloud infrastructure imports—servers, routers, storage devices—are silently crushing Africa’s AI dreams from the backend.
Trade wars have created new dependencies. As the U.S. and China pull African countries into digital spheres of influence—pressuring them to adopt Huawei infrastructure or AWS cloud services—Africa’s AI future is increasingly being shaped by whose side it’s on.
Countries that choose Chinese data centers risk being locked out of certain Western-funded AI grants. Those that align with U.S. partners face limitations on 5G access or surveillance technology provided by Chinese vendors. The continent’s digital sovereignty is being bartered in tariff skirmishes, echoing the scramble for Africa—but now for data, not diamonds.
Cross-border uncertainty has discouraged venture capital flows into African AI startups. Investors worry that geopolitical tensions could make AI startups unscalable due to restrictions on cross-border data transfer, delayed hardware supply chains, or geopolitical backlash.
As Africa seeks to enjoin itself as an entrepreneurial ecosystem, it is expected that improved skills, open source information and access to great internet shall push for African entrepreneurs to find new ways to operate on the Tariffs and ease the cost on the African consumers, businesses and government to whom the “cost of technological advancements” will affect.
Fred Swaniker, Senior Associate at Clifford Chance, points out that African countries are focused on balancing the opportunities and risks associated with AI through talent and skills but bottlenecks remain. “While existing digital infrastructure in countries like Kenya and Mauritius presents infrastructure opportunities, challenges remain in ensuring the usability of data and maximizing digitization efforts,” he says.
As the United States tightens its belt on technological advancements, it is of relevance to note that China continues to be aggressive in AI investments with DeepSeek’s recent model launch.
In the foreseeable future, the continued competition between the U.S. and China is expected to advance AI development hiccups in Africa with rising costs of AI compute and hardware, delayed innovation for African companies and supply chain disruptions bound to continue.
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Faustine Ngila