Draft AI policy: South Africa ‘too dependent’ on US, China

South Africa's newly gazetted draft AI policy openly acknowledges the country's strategic vulnerability from its dependence on US and Chinese hardware and cloud infrastructure. The document calls for investment in local data centre infrastructure and data sovereignty measures to reduce this exposure. The concern is framed within the broader global bifurcation of technology standards along geopolitical lines — from semiconductors and networking equipment to AI silicon and large language models. For South African enterprises and public institutions, procurement decisions made today about cloud platforms, networking vendors, and AI model providers carry long-term switching costs and increasingly geopolitical dimensions. The draft policy is open for public comment until 10 June 2026.