Cassava Technologies said it secured investment from US chipmaker Nvidia to help expand the pan-African group’s digital infrastructure services in the more than 30 African countries it operates in.
Founded by Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, Cassava’s subsidiaries provide a fiber optic cable network, data centers, cloud storage, and financial services across the continent.
Both Cassava and Nvidia declined to comment on the nature and size of the investment. It comes after Nvidia’s valuation surged to nearly $5 trillion against the backdrop of soaring global investment in AI.
Cassava — which is also present in the Middle East, Latin America, and the US — said in March that it would build an “AI factory” in Africa by deploying Nvidia’s artificial intelligence software at its data centers in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Africa accounts for only around 1% of global installed data center capacity, according to research firm Xalam Analytics, but there is a $5 billion market opportunity that has attracted investment in recent years. Before Nvidia’s investment, Cassava had raised at least $310 million over the past year in equity and debt, from Google, the US International Development Finance Corporation, and other investors.
