Cassava Technologies has unveiled plans to build Africa’s first AI Factory, an NVIDIA-powered facility that promises to unlock next-generation computing capabilities for the continent.
The company is positioning the project as a critical leap toward digital self-reliance, bringing advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure home to African soil.
The AI Factory will go live first in South Africa by June 2025, followed by deployments in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria, the company announced on Monday, March 24.
Inside Africa’s first AI Factory
- At the core of this development is a state-of-the-art data center infrastructure, designed to deliver AI as a Service (AIaaS) via Cassava’s ultra-fast, low-latency fiber network.
- The facility will be powered by NVIDIA GPU-based supercomputers, enabling businesses, governments, and researchers to train, fine-tune, and deploy large AI models at scale, with significantly reduced time and cost.
- The factory will also serve as an NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP), giving Cassava a strategic role in advancing Africa’s AI ecosystem.
“By using this secure, high-performance AI Factory, African businesses and governments can develop local solutions to local challenges,” the company said in a statement. “This infrastructure ensures AI deployment happens within a secure environment, aligned with both global and local data regulations.”
A future-proof move for the AI economy
Strive Masiyiwa, Founder and Executive Chairman of Cassava, says this project is about laying the foundation for Africa’s participation in the fourth industrial revolution.
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“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,” Masiyiwa said.
The partnership with NVIDIA enables Cassava to offer Africa the same class of accelerated computing that’s powering AI breakthroughs in markets like the U.S., China, and Europe.
“Collaborating with NVIDIA gives us the advanced computing capabilities needed to drive Africa’s AI innovation while strengthening the continent’s digital independence,” Masiyiwa added.
Why this matters
Africa’s digital economy is growing fast but AI infrastructure has largely lagged behind, forcing innovators to rely on services hosted outside the continent.
According to Jaap Zuiderveld, VP of EMEA at NVIDIA, solving that problem is critical to driving innovation where it’s needed most.
“AI is helping innovators solve our greatest challenges in agriculture, healthcare, energy, and financial services. As an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, Cassava is providing essential infrastructure and software to help pioneering companies and organisations accelerate AI development across the continent,” Zuiderveld said.
The bigger picture
Africa’s first AI factory come amid a wave of interest in scaling Africa’s data and AI capabilities.
Last year, Microsoft and G42, the UAE’s leading AI firm, announced plans to invest $1 billion into a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya. That facility, set to be built in Olkaria, an area rich in renewable geothermal energy, will support East Africa’s cloud-computing ambitions while helping Microsoft meet its climate targets.
While G42 and Microsoft are focused on clean energy-powered cloud infrastructure, Cassava is betting big on continent-wide AI acceleration, using NVIDIA’s technology to anchor its vision.
Africa is ready
With Africa’s first AI Factory underway, the continent is gearing for a future where African innovation can scale from the inside out.
Whether it’s startups fine-tuning language models in Lagos or researchers training vision AI in Nairobi, Africa is no longer just a user of global AI innovation, it’s becoming a builder.
