Zimbabwean Billionaire Strive Masiyiwa’s Cassava Technologies Plans $720M Investment In Nvidia-Built AI Factory In Africa
Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa is looking to invest significantly in Africa’s AI infrastructure.
Masiyiwa is the founder of Cassava Technologies, a telecom solutions provider that prioritizes fiber networks, data centers, renewable energy, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, according to its website. It operates throughout the world with significant concentration in Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. The company also raised $90 million in funding in 2024, with Google as one of its investors, to connect Africa and Australia with the first subsea fiber-optic cable. With this, it continues striving to be the “global technology company of African heritage,” notes TechCrunch.
On Cassava Technologies’ landing page, the company shares the tagline “AI is the beginning of better business.” As it relates to Africa, Masiyiwa believes AI will breed the world’s next billionaires. According to Forbes, he has a reported net worth of $1.3 billion.
“AI will mint the next generation of African billionaires, and they will come from #Reimagining solutions for problems we deal with every day,” Masiyiwa wrote in a LinkedIn post.
In April 2025, Bloomberg reported that Cassava Technologies is interested in investing in Africa’s first AI factory, which Nvidia Corp. is creating. The factory will consider university researchers, startups, and developers across sectors, including health, fintech, and government for GPU renting opportunities. Cassava Technologies is looking to invest up to $720 million in the venture.
“If we don’t take the first step to deploy our own capital, however limited it maybe, we can’t expect others to go first,” Hardy Pemhiwa, the president and group chief executive at Cassava, told Bloomberg. “This is about ensuring that Africa doesn’t get left behind.”
July was the timeframe shared for the data centers to break ground in South Africa, per Time, with 3,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), and more are on the way in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco over the next four years.
Nvidia Corp controls 93% of the GPU market, which helps explain Cassava Technologies’ interest in partnering, as it views Nvidia as “market leaders,” Bloomberg noted.
“Those who understand GPUs and how they are used [and believe me there are many African companies and entrepreneurs who do!] have already pre-ordered most of our initial capacity, ahead of our formal launch in a few months’ time,” Masiyiwa commented on LinkedIn. “We are already having to plan the next phase of the expansion.”
He continued, “It is from them we expect to see new AI applications with the potential to #Enable businesses in every field you can imagine: health services, education, gaming, cryptocurrencies, fintech, and agritech, along with other use cases we haven’t even BEGUN to imagine. I have done my bit by removing a big capital barrier in Africa.”
