But the cultural and economic threats posed by large language models (LLMs) trained on a limited number of languages and owned by a handful of multinational companies have been largely overlooked. Mobile network operators (MNOs) are uniquely positioned to create “local” language models, owing to their armies of developers and data-processing capabilities. The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), of which I am director general, is pursuing a similar strategy in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, Madagascar, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, through the African AI Language Models project. Investment in local AI creates a virtuous circle for developing economies, generating a pool of tech talent that is critical to digital independence. That means collaborating with developers and MNOs to build minority language models that meet their society’s needs.