SAN JOSE, United States of America, March 18/APO Group: Global technology leader of African heritage, Cassava Technologies, is deploying its AI Factory, powered by NVIDIA AI platform, in South Africa, with scaled plans to Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco.
“For Cassava, building Africa’s AI ecosystem is an act of empowerment, not just a technological milestone. 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,” said Group COO and Group Chief Technology & AI Officer, Cassava Technologies Ahmed El Beheiry.
“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 latter can tap into CAIMEx to build, fine-tune, and deploy AI applications by leveraging Cassava’s integrated tool, powered with NVIDIA Blueprints, Models, and NIM microservices.
The company has recently launched Cassava Autonomous Network, considered 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 is removing traditional barriers to entry, providing access to local compute. With this first milestone, 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 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.
“Africa is poised to leapfrog traditional infrastructure, and with this sovereign AI cloud, Cassava is delivering the ultimate engine for digital transformation, allowing businesses and governments to harness powerful AI use cases while ensuring that data stays on the continent,” commented the CEO of Rafay Systems, Haseeb Budhani. “This isn’t just about infrastructure; it’s about democratising innovation, fostering local talent, and building trusted, resilient AI ecosystems that drive real economic growth across the continent, putting African enterprises in control of their destiny.”
