Cassava Technologies and the Rockefeller Foundation have announced a collaboration aimed at giving African innovators greater access to the computing power needed to develop homegrown artificial intelligence solutions.
The initiative will provide several of the foundation’s grantees with compute capacity from Cassava’s planned AI factory, which is being built with NVIDIA infrastructure.
The effort targets organizations working in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, and is intended to strengthen Africa’s position in a global AI industry projected to reach $1.2 trillion.
Africa currently accounts for less than 1% of the world’s data center capacity despite housing nearly 20% of the global population.
“AI presents Africa with one of the best opportunities to drive economic development and access to economic opportunity for the continent’s youth,” said Hardy Pemhiwa, President and Group CEO of Cassava Technologies.
“This requires investment in ensuring that AI developers across Africa have the resources and platforms to create solutions to Africa’s unique challenges… We are excited to partner with the Rockefeller Foundation to bring local compute capacity to Africa’s AI ecosystem.”
Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation, said the partnership aligns with the foundation’s mission to ensure technological advancements benefit broad populations.
“AI can be transformative in the right hands, contributing to healthier communities, more productive farmers, and better education for children… Our collaboration with Cassava reflects The Rockefeller Foundation’s foundational belief that the latest advances in science and technology should serve everyone, not just the fortunate few.”
The collaboration will initially support Digital Green, Jacaranda Health, and Rising Academies, organizations that are applying AI to agriculture, maternal health, and education.
Digital Green is using AI tools to deliver agricultural guidance to farmers in Ethiopia and Kenya. “Farmer.Chat, Digital Green’s AI assistant, is reimagining how smallholder farmers access knowledge, delivering trusted, localised guidance at nearly 100x lower cost than traditional extension,” said CEO Rikin Gandhi. Access to on-continent GPUs, he added, will allow breakthroughs in local language translation, image recognition and speech technology.
Jacaranda Health, which supports maternal and newborn care in Kenya, said the added computing power will help it scale models tailored to local needs. “Access to advanced compute resources on the continent will accelerate our development of culturally-attuned, multilingual AI models while slashing costs,” said Cynthia Kahumbura, Co-Executive Director. “This infrastructure will prevent maternal deaths and build Africa’s capacity to solve its own health challenges with homegrown AI innovation.”
Rising Academies, which operates in Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, said AI has already improved literacy and numeracy outcomes. “In just one academic year, we’ve seen how AI can reshape learning in Rwanda’s classrooms,” said Fidele Hagenimana, Head of Rwanda Programs, citing reduced teacher workload and strong student engagement.
Cassava launched its GPU-as-a-Service platform earlier this year and continues to expand data center capacity across Africa’s major regions. Pemhiwa said the company’s broader goal is to ensure Africans are positioned to build, not just consume, AI technologies.
“This partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation highlights Cassava’s intent to lay the foundations for an ecosystem that is inclusive, sustainable, and globally competitive,” he said.
