Cassava's African 'ai Factory' To Cost Up To 720-million

The pan-African technology firm founded by Zimbabwean telecommunications tycoon Strive Masiyiwa plans to deploy accelerated computing and AI software from the US company in South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco.

"If we don't take the first step to deploy our own capital, however limited it maybe, we can't expect others to go first," Hardy Pemhiwa, the president and group CEO at Cassava, said in an interview. "This is about ensuring that Africa doesn't get left behind."

South Africa will be the first recipient of the AI-powered data centres with 3 000 graphic processing units, or GPUs, from Nvidia deployed by June.

"We intend over the next three to four years to install 12 000 of them across Africa, starting with the 3 000 in South Africa," Pemhiwa said. "The GPUs themselves are like laying fibre, the investment is really about building the whole AI ecosystem."

A single GPU costs between 45 000 and 60 000.