Our leap of faith into AI Compute for Africa

This past week, I travelled to Palo Alto, Silicon Valley where I met with NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang,following the conclusion of our partnership agreement to install NVIDIA supercomputer Graphic Processing Units [GPUs] at our hyperscale data centres in five African countries. It is my biggest undertaking since building Liquid’s continental-scale fibre optic network which now spans nearly the entire continent and took 20+ years to build.

At Cassava AI [where our project to build Africa’s first “AI Factory” is housed] we call it “Project Mufungi” and our product is called “Cassava Intelligence as a Service” [CIaaS].  The first cluster of GPUs will be fully operational in June this year, and we have already begun talking to our potential customers. The rest of the clusters will be up and running in less than 18 months at virtually the same multi-billion dollar cost as our Liquid fibre network.

For those of you still struggling to catch up with some of these AI phrases like “AI Factory” or “Intelligence as a Service”, think of it this way [at least for now!]:  Let’s say you want to develop a Large Language AI model for your mother language. Getting the #Skills to do that is not such a big deal, but accessing the “Compute” needed to power the #Processing in a cost effective manner is challenging.

__Our new powerful GPUs from NVIDIA will change that, and you can expect such work to be done for most of our main African languages within a couple of years! And, of course, our #Entrepreneurs and #Innovators across the continent will also take up many such challenges as well. [Are YOU ready?]

Among many things it will do, this domestic #ComputePower will enable tens of thousands of African #StartUps to rise up and create the next generation of jobs and wealth.

I will never forget the day seven years ago I had coffee with my friend Aliko Dangote, with our “Baba” [as we call former Nigerian President Obasanjo], at an event in Singapore.

Baba challenged us both that day to “do bigger things for Africa… stuff you guys can now do!”

“Don’t do small stuff anymore,” he said. “Do big audacious things, for Africa!”

Aliko spoke of his plans to build a refinery which he has now done at a cost of $19bn. Even though I’d already been busy for years building our Liquid continental fibre network to ensure no African is left behind in the digital revolution, I felt stirred then to do more.

The opportunity came when I listened to a panel in which speaker after speaker kept saying, “Africa would be ‘just a consumer’ of AI because ‘the cost of Compute was beyond us!'”

Sitting there, I thought to myself, “If Aliko can raise $19bn, surely I should be able to raise a few billion dollars to get AI Compute started in Africa. After all, we already have most of the key components right here in our own companies!”

When I mentioned this to Aliko the next time we met, this time together with our friend Prof Oramah of Afreximbank, they were egging me on to do it.

“My brother, you got this. It’s your field now. If you can’t do it, then who?” Aliko joked before adding: “Don’t forget Nigeria!”

“Prof” [as we call Prof Oramah]  as usual just said, “We are always there for you as Afreximbank, even though you will also have to go global for such funding.” That’s how he has spoken to me for over 30 years now.

Many, many people have contributed to this incredible milestone, especially our Cassava Technologies team led by our indefatigable Group President & CEO Hardy Pemhiwa and our Cassava Ai team led by Ahmed El Beheiry [Group COO and Chief AI Officer], Oswald Jumira [CEO of Liquid C2 Cloud and Cybersecurity], and two of our top in-house AI experts, Dr. Prince Abuduand Gavin Manning, all of whom formed the original team to get this project started.

We also consulted with other key people along the way who I cannot name here for professional reasons but whose insights and introductions we deeply appreciate. Today over 100 people are working on this project in our company and we will soon be ramping up considerably. If you have a Masters or PhD in Computer Science or Engineering and live in or want to work in Africa, we would like to hear from you.

__Together, our vision is not just to empower and grow prosperity by providing digital connectivity across Africa. We’re working to ensure Africa’s AI #Future is WRITTEN with our own African data sets, African voices, African history and cultures, African languages, and has the #Compute access needed to enable African-led AI #Solutions.

For instance, right now we’re talking to an AI medical startup working on a GenAi solution for nurses. Another group we know is developing AI solutions for smallholder farmers, and so on. The list is endless, and so much wealth will be generated along the way.

We covet your prayers to make this initiative a success that is beneficial to all Africans, particularly as we expand beyond the first five large African countries into the smaller countries with more Nodes for our supercomputer: The Mufungi.

The Age of AI intelligence has also arrived in Africa!