diff --git a/sci-ml/pysentencepiece/pysentencepiece-0.2.0.ebuild b/sci-ml/pysentencepiece/pysentencepiece-0.2.0.ebuild
index 39d0f7889fcc8..f14d4ada1bbda 100644
--- a/sci-ml/pysentencepiece/pysentencepiece-0.2.0.ebuild
+++ b/sci-ml/pysentencepiece/pysentencepiece-0.2.0.ebuild
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 EAPI=8
 
 DISTUTILS_USE_PEP517=setuptools
+DISTUTILS_EXT=1
 PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_{10..13} )
 inherit distutils-r1