Cassava Technologies, founded by Zimbabwean telecommunications tycoon Strive Masiyiwa, has tapped Nvidia to build Africa’s first artificial intelligence “factory”.
Cassava will deploy Nvidia’s advanced computing and AI software at its data centres in South Africa by June 2025, and then at its other facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria, according to a statement released on the company’s website. Cassava own data centre operator Africa Data Centres.
The roll-out of AI infrastructure is critical if Africa is to take full advantage of the fourth industrial revolution, Masiyiwa said.
“Our AI factory provides the infrastructure for this innovation to scale, empowering African businesses, start-ups and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI infrastructure to turn their bold ideas into real-world breakthroughs and now they don’t have to look beyond Africa to get it,” he said.
Cassava aims to be the first to introduce accelerated computing to Africa as an Nvidia cloud partner.
Several firms including Microsoft and G42, the United Arab Emirates’ top AI firm, expressed an interest last year to build a geothermal-powered data centre in Kenya for US$1-billion as part of a multi-year plan to boost cloud computing capacity in East Africa.
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