Cape Town – Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa is positioning his technology company, Cassava Technologies, for further expansion into Africa’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure market, with South Africa and Kenya emerging as potential destinations for new data centre investments.
The expansion plans follow a partnership between Cassava Technologies, Vodacom and Egyptian industrial group Elsewedy Electric to develop a $1 billion AI data centre in Egypt.
According to Billionaires.Africa, the project, which Vodacom disclosed in its interim results on November 10, is expected to become Egypt’s largest data centre and its first sovereign AI data centre.
Vodacom Group chief executive Shameel Joosub said the investment would be rolled out in phases, with the initial stage expected to attract approximately $200 million in foreign direct investment and deliver 20 megawatts of capacity within three years. The longer-term target is to expand the facility to 200 megawatts.
Bigger markets
Speaking about the company’s expansion ambitions, Joosub identified Egypt, Kenya and South Africa as key markets.
“Egypt, Kenya, South Africa are our bigger markets,” he said, according to Moneyweb, which carried a Bloomberg report.
“It will be a big investment, and that is why we’re bringing on partners.”
Joosub said Vodacom intended to use joint ventures to share the financial burden and bring additional technical expertise into the projects.
“On the one side, we will have a stake in the data centre, and on the other side, we will probably do the lion’s share of the sales of the data centre to customers,” he said.
TechCentral reported that the Egyptian project would cost approximately $1 billion over the next few years, with Vodacom-controlled Vodafone Egypt expected to hold about 30% of the venture.
Broader plan
Joosub said the investment would not be committed upfront, with infrastructure developed in stages as demand grows.
“The number is big, but it won’t be $1-billion immediately. You roll it out as you need to,” he said.
South Africa and Kenya are also part of Vodacom’s longer-term AI infrastructure strategy. However, planning for additional facilities in the two countries remains at an early stage.
In October, Business Day reported that Vodacom’s group chief technology officer, Dejan Kastelic, had identified Kenya as the second planned location for its GPU-as-a-service infrastructure, followed by South Africa.
The developments coincide with Cassava Technologies’ broader plan to deploy 12,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) across five African markets, including South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.
Significant infrastructure gap
The rollout, which Billionaires.Africa reported could cost up to $720 million, is intended to give African businesses access to advanced computing infrastructure without having to invest in expensive hardware themselves.
The investments come amid growing demand for AI computing, cloud services and locally hosted digital infrastructure. Africa currently accounts for less than 1% of global data centre capacity, highlighting the significant infrastructure gap the continent faces as businesses increasingly adopt AI technologies.
Masiyiwa, who founded Econet Wireless before establishing Cassava Technologies, has increasingly positioned his business interests around digital infrastructure, including data centres, fibre networks and cloud computing.
The Vodacom partnership adds to Cassava’s growing network of strategic collaborations as the company seeks to strengthen Africa’s capacity to participate in the global AI economy.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
