Cassava Technologies, Vodafone Business and Elsewedy Electric have signed an
agreement to establish Africa Data Centres Egypt, a data centre project that will include Egypt’s first sovereign AI data centre powered by Nvidia GPUs.
Africa Data Centres Egypt aims to leverage Cassava Technologies’ extensive data centre experience across Africa, Vodafone Business’ expertise in cloud and enterprise services,and Elsewedy Electric’s capabilities in energy, infrastructure and project execution.
According to Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which witnessed the signing ceremony, the project will initially provide 20MW of capacity over
three years, with plans to expand to 200MW.
The ministry expects Africa Data Centres Egypt to attract an initial US$200 million in foreign direct investment, rising to US$1 billion upon completion. The project is also expected to create up to 200 direct and 2 000 indirect jobs.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Raafat Hendy said Africa Data Centres Egypt will strengthen the country’s digital infrastructure, support cloud and AI
services, and enhance data sovereignty by enabling secure local data hosting and
processing.
Meanwhile, Cassava Technologies and Vodafone Business signed a separate but related agreement on the same day (Tuesday, September 8) to launch Egypt’s first AI data centre as part of the project.
The “AI factory” will leverage Nvidia’s accelerated computing technologies through Cassava Technologies, Nvidia’s oficial cloud partner in Africa.
“We are ensuring that African businesses aren’t just consumers of global tech – they are the architects of it,” added Ahmed El Beheiry, group Chief Technology and AI Oficer at Cassava
Technologies and CEO of Cassava AI.
The facility will also provide GPU-as-a-Service to support large-scale AI applications in Egypt, said Mahmoud El-Khatib, vice-president of enterprise business at Vodafone Egypt.
“Through this collaboration, we are strengthening Egypt’s AI infrastructure capabilities and developing sovereign AI solutions by leveraging locally hosted global technologies that ensure data residency within Egypt,” he said in a statement.
