Cassava Technologies, Vodafone Business and Elsewedy Electric have signed an agreement to establish Africa Data Centres Egypt, a new data centre project that will include Egypt’s first sovereign AI data centre powered by Nvidia GPUs.
The project will combine Cassava Technologies’ extensive experience in data centre development across Africa with 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, Africa Data Centres Egypt will initially provide 20MW of capacity over three years, with plans to expand the facility’s capacity to 200MW.
The ministry expects the project to attract an initial US$200 million in foreign direct investment, with the investment projected to reach US$1 billion upon completion. The project is also expected to create up to 200 direct jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs.
The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Raafat Hendy, said Africa Data Centres Egypt will strengthen Egypt’s digital infrastructure, support cloud and artificial intelligence services, and improve data sovereignty by enabling secure local hosting and processing of data.
As part of the broader project, Cassava Technologies and Vodafone Business also signed a separate but related agreement on Tuesday, 8 September, to launch Egypt’s first AI data centre.
The AI facility, described as an “AI factory”, will use Nvidia’s accelerated computing technologies through Cassava Technologies, which is Nvidia’s official cloud partner in Africa.
“We are ensuring that African businesses aren’t just consumers of global tech – they are the architects of it,” said Ahmed El Beheiry, Group Chief Technology and AI Officer at Cassava Technologies and CEO of Cassava AI.
The facility will also offer GPU-as-a-Service to support large-scale AI applications in Egypt, according to 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.
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