Cassava to upgrade data centres, drive Africa’s AI future

CASSAVA Technologies plans to establish Africa’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) factory, a cutting-edge and highly secure data centre powered by NVIDIA AI computing technology.

This facility will provide African businesses, governments and researchers with access to advanced AI computing capacity, enabling them to develop smarter AI products, streamline operations and remain competitive in a rapidly evolving world.

The factory will offer the supercomputers and software necessary to train AI while ensuring that data remains within Africa’s borders.

NVIDIA, a leading company in AI computing, provides hardware and software solutions for various industries, including robotics, autonomous vehicles and data centres, with products such as Jetson, DRIVE and DGX systems.

Cassava plans to deploy NVIDIA’s accelerated computing and AI software using NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) reference architectures at its data centres in South Africa by June 2025.

Expansion will also take place at its other data centre facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria. Cassava’s AI Factory will utilise the company’s extensive pan-African high-speed, ultra-low-latency fibre-optic network, along with sustainable data centres, to deliver AI as a Service (AIaaS).

These world-class data centres are designed to be energy-efficient, consuming less electricity to power AI computing workloads.

NVIDIA GPU-based supercomputers will power the AI factory, enabling faster AI model training, fine-tuning and advanced inference capabilities. Cassava aims to be the first to introduce these accelerated computing platforms to Africa as an NCP, playing a pivotal role in the continent’s AI ecosystem.

The Cassava AI factory will ensure that businesses and researchers have the AI computing power required to scale, boost productivity and foster innovation.

By using this secure, high-performance AI factory, African businesses and governments can create local solutions to address regional challenges, enabling Africans to build, train, scale and deploy AI in a secure environment that complies with both global and local regulations.

“Building digital infrastructure for the AI economy is a priority if Africa is to fully capitalise on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Our AI factory provides the infrastructure for this innovation to scale, empowering African businesses, startups 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,” said Mr Strive Masiyiwa, founder and chairman of Cassava.

“Collaborating with NVIDIA gives us the advanced computing capabilities needed to drive Africa’s AI innovation while strengthening the continent’s digital independence,” he added.

“AI is helping innovators solve our greatest challenges in agriculture, healthcare, energy, financial services and many other sectors, creating new opportunities across Africa,” said Jaap Zuiderveld, vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at NVIDIA.

“As an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, Cassava is providing essential infrastructure and software to help pioneering companies and organisations accelerate AI development and foster innovation across the continent,” he explained.

The Cassava AI factory represents the next step in the group’s long-standing leadership in providing world-class digital solutions. It also reinforces its broader commitment to responsible AI adoption, innovation and productivity growth in Africa.

Cassava Technologies, built from the strong performance and track record of Econet Wireless — one of Africa’s pioneers in the mobile telecommunications industry — is a global technology leader of African heritage. It provides a vertically integrated ecosystem of digital services and infrastructure that enable digital transformation.

Headquartered in the UK, Cassava has a presence across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the United States. Through its business units — Cassava AI, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Liquid C2, Africa Data Centres and Sasai Fintech — the company delivers products and services to customers in 94 countries.

These solutions help drive the company’s ambition of establishing itself as a leading global technology company with African roots.-chroncile