Sri Lanka has asked China to support the establishment of a National Sovereign AI Computing Centre, in talks that also covered a proposed bilateral memorandum of understanding on digital cooperation, the Daily Mirror reported at 3.10 p.m. on Thursday.
The meeting was held on 14 October at the Ministry of Digital Economy, between Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eng. Eranga Weeraratne and Chinese Ambassador Wei Huaxiang.
The candid part is the admission
The proposed centre is described as a way to build Sri Lanka’s capacity to develop and deploy AI while keeping safeguards over citizens’ data — the “sovereign” in the name.
But Weeraratne also said plainly that Sri Lanka currently lacks the infrastructure required to implement sovereign AI capabilities in full, and that what progress exists has come through smaller-scale AI data centres built around data security.
That concession is more informative than the proposal. This desk reported in June that the ministry had opened procurement for AI data centres — powered by renewable energy and pitched at regional as well as domestic clients, with foreign-exchange earnings as part of the case. Weeraratne made that announcement too. Thursday’s filing is the clearest indication so far that those facilities are understood inside the ministry as a partial step rather than the thing itself.
Two centres, or one?
The filing names two facilities without saying how they relate. Alongside the National Sovereign AI Computing Centre, Weeraratne separately raised “the importance of establishing an AI Data Excellence Centre”, together with AI skills and governance, research and development, and new investment.
Whether these are the same project under two names, two components of one programme, or two distinct builds is not stated, and no cost, site, timeline or financing structure is reported for either.
China’s AI footprint in Sri Lankan state institutions keeps widening
The talks also covered deploying AI inside public institutions, specifically naming the Legal Draftsman’s Department and Parliament.
Read against the archive, that is a pattern rather than a one-off. In September, China agreed to support the introduction of AI into Sri Lanka’s judicial system. Adding the body that drafts legislation and the legislature itself extends the same partnership across all three branches of government. Neither filing connects the two, and neither reports what safeguards apply to Chinese involvement in legislative or judicial infrastructure.
Ambassador Wei pointed to China’s experience embedding AI in traditional industries including agriculture, and invited Sri Lanka to join a proposed World AI Cooperation Organization. The filing does not say whether Sri Lanka responded to that invitation.
The MoU traces back to the President’s and Prime Minister’s China visits
Ministry Secretary Varuna Sri Dhanapala said a draft MoU on digital cooperation is being formulated following recent visits by Sri Lanka’s President and Prime Minister to China, with the Ministry of Finance, the Attorney General’s Department and GovTech leadership all involved in the process.
The Attorney General’s Department’s presence in that list is worth noting given that the technology is also proposed for the Legal Draftsman’s Department. GovTech is the body that absorbed the wound-down ICTA.
Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Senior Presidential Advisor on Digital Economy — who led Sri Lanka’s delegation to the AI summits in Geneva in July — also attended, as did Faizal Salieh, Director General (Planning). The Chinese delegation included Economic and Commercial Counsellor Tang Yandi and Third Secretary Lu Wenjing.
Not reported
Nothing is reported on cost, location, hardware, timeline or who would own or operate the proposed computing centre, nor whether Chinese support would take the form of finance, equipment, expertise or all three. The filing does not say when the MoU might be signed or what it would commit either side to. No date is given for the presidential and prime ministerial visits it refers to, and this archive holds no article on them.
The characterisation of the meeting is the ministry’s own. At the time of writing no other verified newsroom had filed on it — checks across NewsFirst, Daily FT’s front-page, business and financial-services listings, Colombo Gazette, EconomyNext, Island, Daily News and news.lk returned nothing, and Ada Derana remained CloudFront-blocked for a 26th day. Two non-verified outlets carried the same ministry account.
