On Monday, Cassava Technologies announced its ambitious plan to establish Africa’s first AI factory, leveraging NVIDIA’s advanced AI computing technology. This groundbreaking initiative aims to transform the continent’s AI capabilities by providing businesses, governments, and researchers access to high-performance computing infrastructure.

Strive Masiyiwa, Founder and Chairman of Cassava Technologies, emphasised the importance of this development: “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”.

The AI factory will be powered by NVIDIA GPU-based supercomputers, which enable faster training and fine-tuning of AI models. Cassava plans to deploy NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI software using Cloud Partner reference architectures at its data centres in South Africa by June 2025.

Expansion is also planned across Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria. This facility will operate on Cassava’s pan-African fiber-optic network and energy-efficient data centers, ensuring low-latency connections and sustainable operations.

Jaap Zuiderveld, NVIDIA’s VP for EMEA, highlighted the collaboration’s impact: “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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Cassava Technologies launches AI factory for African AI solutions

Cassava Technologies’ AI Factory is designed to address local challenges while keeping data within Africa’s borders. Offering secure environments compliant with global regulations will enable African businesses to build, scale, and deploy AI solutions tailored to their unique needs.

Masiyiwa noted that collaborating with NVIDIA strengthens Africa’s digital independence: “Collaborating with NVIDIA gives us the advanced computing capabilities needed to drive Africa’s AI innovation”.

The facility also introduces “AI as a Service” (AIaaS), allowing startups and enterprises to access powerful computing resources without significant upfront investments.

This approach democratises access to AI technology across diverse sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and financial services. Cassava aims to lead the continent in deploying these accelerated computing platforms as an official NVIDIA Cloud Partner.