Cassava Technologies (via Africa Data Centres) has officially moved from planning to execution with its “Sovereign AI” initiative.
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GPU Deployment: The first phase launched with 3,000 NVIDIA GPUs at a facility in South Africa.
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Expansion Roadmap: The project is scaling to 12,000 additional GPUs across Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco over the next 3–4 years.
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Functional Goal: By providing GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS), Cassava is enabling local developers (like the Zindi community) to train models in local languages such as Swahili, Zulu, and Afrikaans.
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The Investment: This is backed by a $700 million deal intended to bridge the continent’s compute gap.
Microsoft & G42: The Kenya “Power Friction”
The high-profile $1 billion geothermal data center in Olkaria, Kenya, is currently facing significant delays and restructuring.
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The Power Bottleneck: The facility’s envisioned scale of 1GW would consume roughly one-third of Kenya’s total national power supply (3GW).
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The “Switch-Off” Reality: President William Ruto noted that powering the site at that scale would require switching off electricity for half the country.
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Commercial Stalemate: Talks reportedly broke down when the Kenyan government could not provide the guaranteed payment levels for capacity that Microsoft and G42 requested.
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Current Status: The project is considered stalled or suspended while the government seeks to expand national capacity to 10GW by 2030.
2026 MARKET OVERVIEW
| Metric | 2026 Status |
| Global Capacity Share | Africa currently accounts for only 0.6% of global data center capacity. |
| Power Density Shift | Modern AI GPU racks now demand 60kW–120kW, up from the standard 5kW–15kW. |
| Dominant Market | South Africa remains the primary hub, hosting the majority of existing capacity. |
| Primary Constraint | Power has officially overtaken fiber as the number one bottleneck for growth. |
VERIFIED REFERENCES
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Cassava Technologies Official: Cassava scales African AI Infrastructure with NVIDIA-Powered AI Factories
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Data Centre Magazine: Nvidia Backs African AI Data Centre Rollout with Cassava
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Capacity Global: Payment row to blame for Microsoft data centre project delay
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iAfrica: Kenya’s $1 Billion Microsoft-G42 Data Centre Project Stalls Over Power Supply Constraints
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ThinkGeoEnergy: Kenya suspends plans for Microsoft’s geothermal-powered data centre
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Rack Centre: The 2026 Data Centres in Africa Economic Report
The “Index” Take: In 2026, the “Digital Transformation” has met its match in “Physical Reality.” While Cassava is successfully laying the GPU rail through private-sector execution, the Microsoft stall in Kenya proves that without massive, parallel investment in National Power Grids, the most ambitious cloud regions will remain unplugged.
