Betting on Billions of Builders: The Case for Stronger AI Partnerships with Global South Nations
By Kellee Wicker, Vice President of the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Space at Meridian International Center
In 2021, a U.S. government-funded paper highlighted the importance of connecting the United States’ Missing Millions — bright minds that are not tapped for their full innovative or academic potential—to the inputs they need to participate in research, unleashing our full ability to innovate and compete in the scientific and technological sectors. This is a smart bet. More minds working on research and building new tools results in more tools for more problem sets and, consequently, more solutions for the stickiest challenges we face nationally and abroad.
We can make the same bet on a much grander scale when we look at the billions of builders around the world—people with the capacity to create new technological solutions—who are currently unable to fully participate in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. Bright minds in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and more hold the potential to push AI and AI-driven tools farther and faster. Their ability to address problems felt most acutely in their local context, such as digitization and leveraging of agricultural data or cutting-edge automation of healthcare, holds promise to revolutionize life for all of us, whether Global North or South. What’s more, these builders will choose a hardware and software stack to support their development, and in choosing will be building atop a certain set of ideals and values. An American bet on these builders means bringing more global AI ecosystems into the democratic fold via the American tech stack.
The time for this bet is now: American decision makers should not think of these countries as solely recipients of technology. Tech ecosystems in these countries, and the markets they both fuel and draw from, are not waiting for American investment—they are growing now. The U.S. must act quickly to build mutually productive relationships, in which we support the growth of AI ecosystems in the Global South.
Democratizing AI Access
Worldwide, AI is arriving at a time where access is definitively not democratized. The digital divide is still real. Basic internet access is not guaranteed; there is much less access to compute, models, and other AI inputs. According to World Bank data, among the least developed countries (by UN classification), only 34% of individuals are using the internet. Access across all countries remains highly stratified by income, and although all countries and regions are demonstrating growth of access, some countries and regions still lag far behind their peers.
While China has expanded its Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road programs to include AI infrastructure growth projects, the United States is missing the opportunity to be a partner to these nations as they seek to create the environment in which their tech economies can grow. The American AI Export Program, along with other programs from the 2025 White House AI Action Plan, will flourish in an environment where there is high demand for AI input access from healthy ecosystems of developers and builders, and where that ecosystem has trust in the U.S. and its products.
The Future is Now
Opportunities and challenges are highly contextual. The Global South encompasses both countries with advanced infrastructure and competitive economies, such as the United Arab Emirates or Brazil, as well as countries facing more acute digital gaps and AI access issues, such as Mali or Myanmar. Even in countries with these shortages and gaps, the capacity to build is not just a possibility, but a reality now. AI’s democratization of access to information and the skills needed to build new tools, even for builders with only limited model and compute access, combines with a new wave of academic and technological talent to enable new ideas to grow.
These new ideas face three potential outcomes:
- Starved of inputs needed to grow, the idea either never reaches a true build phase, or withers after some initial work;
- With limited inputs, the idea results in a solution that scales locally, constrained by access and infrastructure gaps;
- Or, with a robust ecosystem as the foundation, the idea becomes a tool, approach, or solution that offers a serious pathway to meeting challenges or consumer demand in the local market, and potentially on the global stage.
The most successful example of flourishing growth leading to global impact is the financial technology revolution, which has seen the widest and most rapid adoption in regions like Africa, where Kenya’s branchless M-PESA banking system launched in 2007 rapidly became the standard for banking and payments in multiple countries across the continent. Fintech, particularly mobile banking, rooted deeply and quickly in these regions where one or more of these factors were true:
- Basic banking needs weren’t being met;
- Financial services were relatively more expensive, or competition between providers was decreased;
- The regulatory environment was less stringent; or
- The population was comparatively younger.
Similarly, mobile infrastructure was at a crucial point where access was already largely globalized and democratized: mobile banking and other innovations could serve the needs of those not served by the traditional system. And in many countries, this mobile infrastructure was underwritten by international partners, such as China’s Huawei via the Chinese Digital Silk Road program. Early involvement and investment into ecosystem growth can translate into long-term engagement.
Seeking Sovereignty
For Global South countries, sovereignty and the ability to self-determine their tech futures are essential. In this context, it can be difficult to understand why a partnership is necessary to achieve national aims. But AI infrastructure is rapidly consolidating, and American labs and tech companies remain the most prominent providers across multiple categories, including two key components:
- Physical ownership of compute is increasingly concentrated in a handful of hyperscalers, mostly American, and several early-mover or resource-rich national programs. The price of entry has jumped beyond a feasible point for most actors, and is only increasing.
- Dominant foundation models are largely produced by American labs, and while open source models available from a multiplicity of countries are increasingly capable of handling diverse use cases, foundation models will continue to be the cutting edge upon which the most complex use cases depend, such as scientific research or national security needs.
In Delhi in 2026, Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, professed the United States’ commitment to supporting countries’ AI sovereignty while freeing them from the capital and time-intensive burden of attempting to build physical infrastructure associated with sovereignty. Global South countries should take note of the reality of this burden, and the associated risk of falling even further behind. At the same time, U.S. partners need to ensure they are building relationships and deals that are not extractive or exploitative.
Partnership isn’t an obvious pathway to sovereignty, but is a necessary one in the AI age. Mutual trust and mutual respect are the baselines on which these partnerships must be built.
Vision for Partnerships
A genuine partnership between U.S. companies and Global South tech economies should look like a typical business relationship, and rest atop the trust referenced earlier. Hallmarks of this relationship might include:
- U.S. companies and government programs engaging before the market is proven, bringing capital, technical infrastructure access, and distribution in exchange for the local knowledge, data, and context that makes products actually work in these markets.
- Companies investing in the local talent base not to hire these workers away, but to make local ecosystems more durable with well-equipped leaders and builders.
- Agreements between governments and companies on intellectual property and data governance that allow local value capture, not just local deployment.
- Global South governments creating regulatory clarity and continuity that facilitates business activity and long-term growth, for both international firms and for local startups.
But First, We Listen
Before we can truly map out how to feed tech ecosystems around the world, we must talk to stakeholders around the world to understand the opportunities, the challenges, and the way ahead as they see it. These tech economies are not waiting for the U.S. or China to arrive to find the way forward, nor should they. The Global South must act now to capture value in the AI revolution and make a place at the table to speak into global governance questions. The way to do this is through powerful partnerships.
In turn, the United States must understand what these partners seek to build before we can find a way to serve as a partner and accelerator for that work. We must also see that in these partnerships, we reap a significant amount of benefit: we shore up an environment that prioritizes individual freedoms, we build up clients for the American tech stack, and we boost the creation of new solutions for the problems we all face.
The AI age is here; now it’s time to extend its benefits to all people.
