Article by Maha Hosain Aziz: “Traditional foreign aid is losing steam. Budget constraints, donor fatigue and nationalist politics have eroded the once-dominant western development model. But as governments pull back, a new actor has stepped in. Artificial intelligence is being deployed with a speed and reach that traditional organisations struggle to match. Code — not cash — is the new foreign aid.
Across the global south, AI is already doing some of the work that aid agencies once dominated. Ubenwa’s neonatal diagnostic app in Nigeria, Somanasi’s AI tutor in Kenya and Hello Tractor’s AI-enabled fleet management for small farmers are delivering essential services where public institutions are overstretched or absent.
Who is delivering this AI-powered development? It’s not the World Bank or USAID. Instead, tech companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, alongside local civic-tech innovators, are stepping forward.
Consider what has already been rolled out. In the past year OpenAI has partnered with a primary care provider in Kenya to support local AI development in healthcare. In South Africa, billionaire Strive Masiyiwa worked with Nvidia to launch the continent’s first “AI factory” — a Johannesburg-based hub designed to train local talent and build regionally relevant models. In Kenya and Ghana, Google is investing in AI research centres. These projects are not labelled as foreign aid, but they’re delivering infrastructure, skills, and tools in exactly the areas where traditional donors have pulled back.
This work isn’t altruism, it’s strategy. The Trump administration’s recently released AI Action Plan makes the point explicit: AI is now a core pillar of foreign policy. The plan outlines a bold objective — exporting “the full AI stack” (from chips to models to standards) to build alliances, spread American values and counter Chinese influence in emerging markets.
But those values are not always clear — or universally shared. Alongside the push to expand access to “responsible AI,” US policymakers are backing efforts to remove what some see as “woke” elements from AI models — curbing progressive language on race, gender and history…(More)”.
