When Meg Whitman was living in California and running first eBay Inc. and then HP Inc., the idea that Africa had some role to play in her businesses rarely crossed her mind. “I literally thought about Africa 1% of my time,” she says.

Such inattention is common at US tech companies, which generally decided that establishing significant operations on the continent wasn’t worth it, considering its unstable governments, oscillating tax regimes and patchy digital infrastructure. Changing that calculus is now a major focus for Whitman, who as US ambassador to Kenya is trying to help the US catch up in an area that’s become a key front in the intensifying technology rivalry with Beijing.

“Half the battle is showing up, and I don’t think America showed up quite as much as we might have in the last 20 years,” says Whitman, speaking from the US Embassy in Nairobi, a sprawling compound in the upscale residential suburb of Gigiri. “We left an open running room for China.”

When it comes to technology, the major source of Chinese influence is Huawei Technologies Co., which for years has been aggressively forming partnerships with African governments. In Kenya, Huawei has developed—and in many cases helped finance—telecommunications and internet networks, as well as a sprawling surveillance camera system and parts of a new industrial city housing the tech industry. The company is vital to the so-called Digital Silk Road, China’s long-term effort to spread its tech and influence across Africa and the Global South.

When President Joe Biden chose Whitman in late 2021, the US had already begun to lay the groundwork for its response. In 2019 the Trump administration launched the International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) to provide strategic lending overseas; the following year, the DFC pledged $300 million to Johannesburg-based developer Africa Data Centres for projects in Kenya and South Africa. The agency has since invested $11 billion in sub-Saharan Africa, including contributing to a $225 million investment into the parent company of Africa Data Centres to build fiber cables for data centers in seven countries.

Since starting its own dedicated effort in December 2022, the US Trade and Development Agency has provided grants for 15 digital projects in Africa. “Our goal is helping to support a level playing field for US industry,” says Lisa Coppé, the agency’s senior manager for sub-Saharan Africa.

There’s also been an uptick in private US investment into the kind of projects that Huawei and other Chinese entities have often bankrolled, including fiber cables and semiconductor plants. In May, Microsoft Corp. announced $1 billion in commitments for Kenya, including a massive data center it’s building in tandem with Abu Dhabi-based conglomerate G42 outside Nairobi. Whitman says the project, designed for computing related to large artificial intelligence models, has already broken ground, but there’s no public timeline for its completion. Google, Amazon and Oracle have also all announced expansion plans in Kenya this year.

Whitman has been lobbying the Kenyan government for policy changes to make the country more appealing to America’s tech giants. In 2023 they helped get rid of a tax on unrealized gains on stock options, as well as a rule requiring tech companies to have a minimum 30% local share of ownership.

A DFC official says it requires recipients to use “like-minded partners,” and Whitman has said any project receiving US support can’t rely on Chinese infrastructure. Still, the geopolitics are sensitive enough that US officials try to avoid being too explicit about its targets. In May, for instance, the White House released a statement praising Microsoft’s Kenyan deal, including a line about the country’s chance to move away from “Huawei-owned” facilities, as visible on an archived version of the web page. Hours after the statement was published, it was altered to reference only the US preference for nonspecified “trusted vendors.”

The Chinese government argues that it isn’t the one playing politics in Africa. “The starting point and goal of China-Africa cooperation has always been to help Africa’s development and enhance the well-being of the peoples of China and Africa,” a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Africa should not become a battleground for great power competition.”

Tension between the US and China over technology began to increase under former President Donald Trump. His administration undercut Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE Corp. by restricting their access to US technology and customers; in 2020 the US designated both companies as national security threats and ordered telecom carriers to strip out their equipment. The Biden administration has been just as hostile, investing heavily to develop the US semiconductor industry while leaning on allies to help keep Chinese companies from developing or accessing the world’s most advanced chips.

With the US presidential election looming, it’s unclear whether Whitman will complete her three-year tenure as ambassador. If Trump is reelected, she may resign—a common practice for politically appointed diplomats after a change in administration. What that means for US activities in Africa is up in the air. Trump’s position on China is likely to be aggressive, but he paid little attention to Africa when he was in the White House.

In the meantime, Whitman is pushing to get Africa front of mind in Silicon Valley. Last fall she took Kenyan President William Ruto on his first visit there. The pair met with the chief executive officers of Apple, Google and Intel, making the case that the nation’s young, fast-growing population and ample green energy made it a good alternative to expanding in Asia. “The pitch that I make to American companies is: ‘You probably want to be diversifying your supply chains,’” Whitman says. “‘You should look at countries in Africa.’” US officials have also tried luring European tech companies Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj to Africa to compete with Huawei.

Several large US tech companies have announced recent investment or workforce plans in Kenya, but Whitman knows the continent remains a low priority. Those that do come still have to compete with Huawei, which is deeply entrenched in Africa and prepared to defend its position. When the company gets wind of US interest in an infrastructure project there, its sales agents quickly swoop in to offer all-expenses-paid trips to a hub in Dubai to win a contract, according to a person familiar with the practice, who asked not to be identified discussing a private business matter. Unlike Ericsson or Microsoft, Huawei provides soup-to-nuts solutions, handling everything from telecom routes to cloud computing to smart-city gadgets. “Huawei offers complete care, they are easy to work with, and they are cheap,” says Heath Andersen, a data center consultant in South Africa.

In early September, President Xi Jinping hosted a summit of African leaders to tout China’s deeper political ties to the continent and a $50 billion spending pledge. On the event’s sidelines, Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi and Nigeria all unveiled partnerships with Huawei. A spokesperson for Huawei declined to comment.

Before AI, Africa wasn’t a particularly attractive place to build internet infrastructure designed to service non-African markets. Reducing latency is a priority for such services as messaging and web browsing, creating an incentive to build data centers close to the customers they’re serving. But much of the heavy lifting in AI comes from training massive models, where access to abundant cheap electricity is more important than the absolute fastest transmission times. “What Africa has is plentiful power,” says Brooks Washington, the Kenya-based CEO of investment firm Roha Group. “It’s often renewable. It’s often cheap.”

This global race to build such data centers means US tech companies could start seeing significant potential in Africa. For Whitman, it’s also opened a window of opportunity to offset China’s large head start on the continent. “The good news, to some degree, is much of this Huawei infrastructure is now quite old,” she says. “So there’s a refresh cycle coming up that America should be able to compete for.”