Staff Writer 
Microsoft Corp is making a push for more Africans to adopt its artificial-intelligence tools as the US tech giant competes with China’s DeepSeek for customers from the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population.
The Redmond, Washington-based company plans to train 3 million Africans on its AI technology this year, in partnership with schools, universities and other institutions, with a focus on South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco.
It’s also partnered with MTN Group Ltd., Africa’s biggest telecommunications firm, to sell the Microsoft 365 suit of apps together with its Copilot digital assistant to its 300 million subscribers.
The Microsoft Elevate training initiative aims “to make sure cost is not a barrier to building AI literacy at scale,” Middle East and Africa President Naim Yazbeck said in an interview. “Chinese technology is active in Africa and our job is to compete.”
As much of the world focuses on how AI giants are competing in the US and Europe, Chinese rivals such as open-source AI platform DeepSeek have gained traction in many African countries, accounting for roughly 11% to 14% of chatbot use, according to a Microsoft report.
In Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, DeepSeek has as much as 20% market share following a strategic push by Beijing and its companies to build digital infrastructure, expand telecom networks and roll out AI services to its fast-growing markets.
The US has sought to counter this effort with its own strategic investments across the continent as part of a long-term bid for customers, soft power and troves of data that will shape the future of AI.
In South Africa — the continent’s biggest market — Microsoft is investing R5.4 billion ($330 million) to expand its cloud and AI capacity by the end of next year, and it also has plans to build a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya.
“We need to do a better job in accelerating” Copilot adoption, said Yazbeck.
DeepSeek is generally far cheaper for developers to use than Microsoft’s Azure — a public suite of cloud-computing services to build and manage applications — and Copilot offerings.
Yazbeck said Microsoft is providing entrepreneurs with Azure and its code-hosting platform Github at its Startup Founders Hub, where they also have access to venture-capital investors.
Copilot is gaining traction in the African corporate sector, with South African grocer Spar Group Ltd. using the tool to save more than 700 employee hours a year, while Nigeria’s Access Holdings Plc has embedded AI into daily workflows, Yazbeck said.
Yazbeck urged countries across the continent to make AI a national priority, adding that other places that had done so — such as the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Saudi Arabia — were already starting to see the returns.
African countries “have to look at it as an enabler of future economic development,” he said, adding that AI adoption could increase the continent’s gross domestic product by $1.5 trillion by 2030.
© 2026 Bloomberg
