Nvidia and Zimbabwean billionaire to boost African AI capacity

Cassava Technologies, the digital infrastructure group founded by Zimbabwean telecoms tycoon Strive Masiyiwa, has signed a multi-billion-dollar deal with chipmaker Nvidia to bring advanced artificial intelligence (AI) computing capabilities to its data centres in Africa.

Under the agreement, Cassava will deploy Nvidia’s graphic processing units (GPUs) and software tools at its facilities, with the first cluster set to be operational in South Africa by June 2025. Further installations are planned for Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria. The infrastructure will allow companies, governments and researchers to train AI models locally while retaining data within the continent.

AI is believed to have the potential to offer wide-ranging benefits for Africa, particularly in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and education. There is also scope to develop a variety of AI tools in local African languages. According to Cassava, increased access to AI compute power could support the emergence of numerous African startups. The company is, for instance, in discussions with a medical startup developing a generative AI tool for nurses. It is also in contact with another group working on AI solutions for smallholder farmers.

Masiyiwa, who first made his mark with Zimbabwe’s mobile network operator Econet, has grown Cassava into a major provider of digital infrastructure. The company operates more than 110,000km of fibre-optic network and runs what it says is Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier-neutral data centres. He described the Nvidia deal as his biggest undertaking since building a continent-wide fibre network.

Despite being home to 18% of the world’s population, Africa accounts for less than 1% of total available global data centre capacity. In recent years, though, investment in data centres has picked up, with companies such as Teraco, Rack Centre, Raxio Group, PAIX – as well as Cassava’s Africa Data Centres – increasing their presence. Urbanisation, population growth and the expansion of mobile networks are driving demand for data centres as more Africans connect to the internet. Much of the current capacity is concentrated in South Africa, which accounts for 408MW. Nigeria and Egypt follow with 140MW and 118MW respectively, while Kenya has 79MW and Morocco 65MW.

Power and cooling are among the most pressing challenges for data centres in Africa. Many countries have unreliable power generation and implement scheduled outages to manage demand, making it difficult and costly to maintain the consistent electricity needed for round-the-clock operations. AI workloads compound the problem by significantly increasing energy consumption and heat, further straining existing infrastructure.

 

References

'Capitalising on Africa’s data centre boom', WSP Africa, 14 November 2024

'Africa can benefit from artificial intelligence, but must first develop its infrastructure', African Development Bank, 24 November 2024

'Digital public infrastructure (DPI) will drive AI for Africa’s economic transformation', African Center for Economic Transformation, 11 February 2025

'Data centre transformation paves way for rise of AI in Africa', TechCentral, 13 February 2025

'Cassava to upgrade its data centres with NVIDIA supercomputers to drive Africa’s artificial intelligence (AI) future', APO Group, 24 March 2025  

'Cassava Technologies to deploy Nvidia software in South Africa', Semafor Africa, 24 March 2025    

'Our leap of faith into AI compute for Africa', Strive Masiyiwa, 24 March 2025

‘Tackling a critical need for data center infrastructure across Africa’, DFC, Accessed 25 March 2025