Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa’s $720m AI vision for the African continent
Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa has unveiled a $720 million plan to build five artificial intelligence (AI) factories across Africa within the next year, in a bid to reshape the continent’s digital future.
Through his company, Cassava Technologies, Masiyiwa aims to give African researchers, startups, and governments access to high-performance AI infrastructure that has long been concentrated in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
“Our AI factory provides the infrastructure for innovation to scale, empowering African businesses, start-ups, and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI infrastructure. Now they don’t have to look beyond Africa to get it,” Business Insider quotes Masiyiwa.
The first facility is already being developed in South Africa and will run on 3,000 Nvidia GPUs. The others are expected in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco.
Earlier this year, Cassava launched a dedicated AI business unit and signed partnerships with global tech giants Microsoft, AWS, Google, and Anthropic. Analysts say such alliances could accelerate Africa’s role in the global AI industry while ensuring the infrastructure benefits local talent and institutions.
Africa is home to fast-growing pools of tech talent, but only 5% of AI developers on the continent currently have access to the computing power required to train advanced AI models. By building local AI infrastructure, Cassava hopes to close this gap, reduce costs, and keep sensitive data on the continent.
Masiyiwa, worth an estimated $1.3 billion, made his fortune building Econet Wireless into one of Africa’s largest telecom companies before expanding into cloud computing, fintech, and cybersecurity.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
