Africa's AI Revolution: Cassava And Nvidia Partner To Build The Continent’s First AI Factory

 

Excitement is building in Kigali, Rwanda, as the Global AI Summit on Africa kicks off, bringing with it the promise of economic transformation and technological innovation. Adding to the momentum is the recent announcement from Cassava Technologies, a company founded by Zimbabwean telecoms billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, that it will establish Africa’s first “artificial intelligence factory” in partnership with leading AI chipmaker Nvidia.

Closing the AI Infrastructure Gap

Africa has struggled to keep pace with the global AI boom, largely due to a lack of computational power. A report from Zindi, a community of 80,000 AI practitioners across 52 African countries, revealed that only 5% of Africa’s AI developers have access to the necessary computing resources for research and innovation.

Cassava’s partnership with Nvidia seeks to change that. The tech giant’s high-performance GPUs—critical for AI model training—will be deployed at Cassava’s data centers in South Africa starting in June, with further expansion planned in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria.

According to Alex Tsado, founder of Alliance4AI, this development could be a game-changer. “Currently, there are no large GPU clusters in Africa, and this is holding back innovation,” he explains. Without access to high-performance computing, AI development in Africa takes significantly longer compared to regions with better infrastructure.

Accelerating AI Innovation

While Cassava has yet to outline its full deployment plan, it has stated that Nvidia’s GPU-powered supercomputers will provide the processing power needed for businesses and researchers to build, train, scale, and deploy AI solutions securely.

Masiyiwa emphasized the significance of this move, stating, “Our AI factory provides the infrastructure for innovation to scale, empowering African businesses, startups, and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI resources—right here on the continent.”

One of the biggest obstacles to AI adoption in Africa has been the high cost of hardware. Some of Nvidia’s top GPUs sell for as much as $40,000, making them inaccessible for many developers. A report by AI4D found that the cost of purchasing a GPU in Kenya is equivalent to 75% of the country’s GDP per capita—31 times more expensive than in Germany. This has forced African AI practitioners to rely heavily on foreign cloud services like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, which are costly due to high data transmission expenses.

Celina Lee, CEO of Zindi, believes Cassava’s AI infrastructure will significantly lower these barriers. “Africa-based AI infrastructure will provide more affordable computing power, faster access to AI tools, and lower latency, making it easier to develop and deploy AI models efficiently,” she says.

Democratizing AI and Strengthening African Representation

With increased access to AI infrastructure, African developers will have greater opportunities to train models using local datasets, addressing biases that often exist in global AI models. Many AI systems struggle with African languages and dialects due to a lack of representation in training datasets. Similarly, facial recognition systems frequently misidentify individuals with darker skin tones because of imbalanced data.

“This would democratize AI development, strengthen local AI ecosystems, and drive innovation across industries like agriculture, healthcare, and financial services,” says Lee.

Overcoming Challenges

Despite the promise of Cassava’s initiative, infrastructure challenges remain. Africa’s unreliable power grids have historically discouraged investments in AI infrastructure. Additionally, even with increased GPU access, many end-users in Africa rely on lower-grade smartphones with limited internet capabilities, making AI adoption more difficult.

However, Tsado sees Cassava’s investment as a significant step forward. “This is a very welcome boost. Africa’s big tech players are finally joining the AI revolution and investing in the necessary infrastructure,” he says. “Strive Masiyiwa’s announcement is the first major commitment, and it may inspire other industry leaders to follow suit.”

With Cassava and Nvidia leading the charge, Africa’s AI ecosystem is poised for a transformation—one that could unlock the continent’s full technological potential.