Cassava Technologies has announced a major boost to scale up artificial intelligence infrastructure across Africa through the deployment of NVIDIA-powered AI Factories.
It is starting in South Africa and is going to expand to Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco.
This initiative is an important step towards strengthening Africa's digital sovereignty by enabling local access to high performance computing and reducing dependence on foreign data infrastructure.
Cassava, which is NVIDIA's first cloud partner in Africa, said the AI Factory model is designed to provide African businesses, developers and governments with advanced tools to build, train and deploy AI solutions locally.
Ahmed El Beheri, group COO and chief technology and AI officer at Cassava Technologies, said the project is more than just infrastructure.
He described it as a strategic effort to empower African innovation to ensure that the continent becomes a producer and not just a consumer of global technology.
“Our goal is to give Africa the infrastructure to write its own future using its own languages and data,” El Behery said. He said the company is giving priority to local language models starting with Swahili, Zulu and Afrikaans.
The rollout of the AI Factory builds on the earlier launch of Cassava's AI platform, the Cassava AI Multi-Modal Exchange (CAMEX), which was introduced in 2025.
The platform provides developers with access to leading AI models and tools, enabling them to build and improve applications tailored to African markets.
Cassava has also introduced its Autonomous Network solution, which leverages AI to improve the performance of telecommunications networks and is targeted at mobile network operators across the continent.
With its latest deployment, the company is providing services such as GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS), lowering the barrier to entry for organizations that previously lacked access to advanced computing resources.
A key feature of the AI Factory model is its focus on sovereign AI, ensuring that data generated within Africa remains on the continent. This approach allows the development of locally relevant AI models while addressing data privacy, regulatory and security concerns.
Rafe Systems CEO Haseeb Budhani described the development as a vital engine for digital transformation, enabling African enterprises to build flexible AI systems while maintaining control over their data.
Similarly, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of South Africa said that local AI infrastructure will support research in key sectors such as health care, agriculture and energy.
Zindi, an African data science platform, also welcomed the initiative, highlighting its potential to unlock AI talent across the continent and boost home-grown innovation.
Cassava Technologies said the expansion is part of its broader mission to establish Africa as a global player in artificial intelligence by providing the infrastructure needed to support innovation at scale.
With operations spread across 94 countries through its various business units including Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Africa Data Center and Sasai Fintech, the company is aiming to create a fully integrated digital ecosystem.
By scaling up AI infrastructure and enabling local innovation, Cassava is seeking to transform Africa's role in the global technology sector from a passive participant to an active creator of next-generation AI solutions.
