Cassava Technologies has teamed up with The Rockefeller Foundation in a major new initiative aimed at accelerating Africa’s adoption of artificial intelligence by expanding access to high-performance computing for innovators across the continent.
Under the partnership, Cassava will provide compute capacity—powered by NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure—to Rockefeller Foundation grantees working in eight countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.
The effort is expected to bolster African-led innovations in agriculture, healthcare, and education while widening the continent’s participation in the projected US$1.2 trillion global AI economy.
Hardy Pemhiwa, President and Group CEO of Cassava Technologies, said the collaboration aligns with the company’s vision of building Africa’s first AI factory and enabling local developers to design solutions grounded in African data, languages, and challenges.
“AI presents Africa with one of the best opportunities to drive economic development and access to opportunity for the continent’s youth,” Pemhiwa said.
“Our AI factory will allow startups, enterprises, the public sector, and educational institutions to develop applications using local datasets and languages. We are excited to partner with The Rockefeller Foundation to bring local compute capacity to Africa’s AI ecosystem.”
Despite accounting for nearly one-fifth of the world’s population, Africa hosts less than 1% of global data-center capacity—a major limitation for digital transformation and AI adoption. Yet the continent’s AI market, currently valued at US$5.17 billion, is projected to grow rapidly over the next decade.
Rockefeller Foundation President Dr. Rajiv J. Shah said the partnership will ensure that advances in AI benefit African communities directly.
“If we get AI right in Africa, we can help Africans create jobs, advance opportunity, and pursue their dreams,” Dr. Shah noted. “This collaboration reflects our belief that science and technology must serve everyone, not just the fortunate few.”
Several African organizations are already positioned to benefit:
- Digital Green is using AI tools like Farmer.Chat in Ethiopia and Kenya to provide localized, real-time, low-cost agricultural advice to smallholder farmers. Access to GPUs will unlock advances in speech-to-text, translation, image recognition, and RAG-enabled advisory tools.
- Jacaranda Health in Kenya is deploying AI-powered maternal and newborn health solutions. Its Co-Executive Director, Cynthia Kahumbura, said local compute capacity will help develop multilingual, culturally aligned AI models that can prevent maternal deaths and empower families with timely health information.
- Rising Academies, operating in West Africa, is using AI to enhance learning for more than 250,000 students. The company reports that Rwanda’s classrooms have already seen strong gains in literacy and numeracy with AI tools like Rori and LearnLens.
Cassava launched its GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) platform earlier this year and continues to invest in AI infrastructure across East, West, and North Africa. Pemhiwa said the company’s priority is to ensure that Africans become builders—not merely consumers—of AI technologies.
“This partnership highlights our commitment to an inclusive, sustainable, and globally competitive AI ecosystem for Africa,” he added.
The collaboration marks one of the most significant investments yet in democratizing AI capabilities for social impact across the continent.