Data Centres & Networks

Vodafone, Cassava and Elsewedy Electric form Africa Data Centers Egypt

Vodafone, Cassava and Elsewedy Electric form Africa Data Centers Egypt

Vodafone Business, Cassava Technologies and Elsewedy Electric signed an agreement on Tuesday to establish Africa Data Centers 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 Vodafone Business’ expertise in cloud and enterprise services, Elsewedy Electric’s capabilities in energy, infrastructure and project execution, and Cassava Technologies’ experience in data centres across Africa.

According to Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which witnessed the signing ceremonty, the data centre 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 US$200 million in foreign direct investment initially, growing to US$1 billion upon completion, and 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 Egypt’s digital infrastructure, support cloud and AI services, and enhance data sovereignty by enabling secure local data hosting and processing.

Meanwhile, Vodafone Business and Cassava signed a separate but related agreement the same day to launch Egypt’s first AI data centre as part of the project.

The “AI factory” will leverage Nvidia’s accelerated computing technologies via Cassava, which is Nvidia’s official cloud partner in Africa. The facility will also offer GPU-as-a-Service to support large-scale AI applications in Egypt, said Mahmoud El-Khatib, VP 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.

“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 officer at Cassava Technologies, and CEO of Cassava AI.



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