Cassava and Nvidia to launch Africa’s ‘first AI factory’

Zimbabwean telecoms tycoon Strive Masiyiwa’s Cassava Technologies is teaming up with US tech giant Nvidia – one of the world’s most valuable companies – to build what it says is Africa’s “first AI factory”.

UK-headquartered Cassava, founded and executive chaired by Masiyiwa, says it will build “a powerful and super-secure data centre facility” powered with Nvidia AI computing technology.

Cassava says it will deploy Nvidia accelerated computing and AI software using Nvidia cloud partner (NCP) reference architectures at its data centres in South Africa by June 2025, with expansion planned at its other data centre facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.

“This will give African businesses, governments and researchers access to cutting-edge AI computing capacity – helping them develop smarter AI products, streamline operations and stay competitive in a fast-changing world. It provides the supercomputers and software needed to train AI while keeping data within Africa’s borders,” the company said.

California-based Nvidia, which has a market cap of almost $3 trillion, is a provider of artificial intelligence software and hardware, and designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs) and application programming interfaces for data science and high-performance computing.

NvidiaGPU-based supercomputers will power the AI factory, enabling “faster AI model training, fine-tuning and advanced inference capabilities,” Cassava added.

The factory will use the Cassava’s pan-African fibre-optic network and data centres to deliver AI as a Service (AIaaS).

“By using this secure, high-performance AI Factory, African businesses and governments can develop local solutions to local challenges, enabling Africans to build, train, scale and deploy AI in a secure environment compliant with global and local regulations,” Cassava said.

Boost for startups

Masiyiwa said that the AI factory will bring new AI capabilities to Africa for the first time.

“Building digital infrastructure for the AI economy is a priority if Africa is to take full advantage of 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.”

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

Jaap Zuiderveld, vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Nvidia, said that Cassava will provide infrastructure and software to help companies and organisations accelerate AI development.

“AI is helping innovators solve our greatest challenges in agriculture, healthcare, energy, financial services and many other industries creating opportunity in Africa.”

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