Cassava Technologies is deploying its AI Factory in South Africa – with plans to scale to Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco.
“For Cassava, building Africa’s AI ecosystem is an act of empowerment, not just a technological milestone,” says Ahmed El Beheiry, Group COO and CTO & AI officer at Cassava. “As the continent’s first Nvidia Cloud partner, we are ensuring that African businesses aren’t just consumers of global tech – they are the architects of it. Our goal is to give Africa the infrastructure to write its own future, using its own languages – starting with Swahili, then expanding to languages such as Zulu and Afrikaans to better serve local users and markets – and data to build a digital legacy on its own terms”
With the launch of Cassava AI Multi-Model Exchange (CAIMEx) in 2025, Cassava designed a first-of-its-kind platform to make the world’s leading AI tools and large language models (LLMs) easily accessible to African developers. The company also recently launched Cassava Autonomous Network, a blueprint that runs on the CAIMEx platform and is designed to significantly improve network performance across Africa, and is available for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to leverage.
The localised deployment of high-performance computing marks a turning point for the continent. By offering GPUaaS, AIaaS/APIs, Cassava says it is removing traditional barriers to entry, providing access to local compute. With this first milestone, it adds, Cassava will ensure that Africa has its own production of intelligence – sovereign AI factories keep intelligence securely within borders, tune models to local languages and cultures, and cultivate local jobs, startups, and economic growth.
This offering will enable African enterprises and governments to innovate independently, Cassava says. This democratisation of technology empowers African organisations across the public sector, telecom, financial services, insurance, healthcare, mining, oil and gas, and retail not only to keep pace with the global AI race, but also to lead it.