Cassava Technologies has partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation in a major push to expand access to high-performance AI compute for NGOs building social-impact solutions across Africa, in a move expected to accelerate innovation in agriculture, health and education.

The partnership will see Cassava deliver GPU-powered compute locally hosted in secure data centres and supported by NVIDIA AI infrastructure to organisations operating in eight African countries. The initiative comes at a time when Africa holds less than 1% of global data-centre capacity, a gap that has limited the continent’s ability to fully develop home-grown AI solutions.

Cassava said the collaboration is designed to ensure AI can be built with African data for African communities, positioning local innovators to create tools that respond directly to the continent’s needs.

By Ruvarashe Gora

Early beneficiaries include Digital Green, which provides real-time advisory services to farmers; Jacaranda Health, known for its maternal and child health interventions; and Rising Academies, which is deploying AI-enabled learning solutions reaching more than 250,000 students.

Cassava Technologies added that as it scales its GPU-as-a-Service offering, partnerships of this nature will help shift Africa from being a consumer of AI to a creator of cutting-edge solutions that strengthen livelihoods and expand opportunity across the region.