There\u2019s excitement bubbling in Kigali, Rwanda, ahead of the\u00a0Global AI Summit on Africa, which opens today, promising economic opportunities and innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not least because of last week\u2019s\u00a0announcement\u00a0from Cassava Technologies, a tech firm founded by Zimbabwean telecoms billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, that it would be building Africa\u2019s first \u201cartificial intelligence factory,\u201d in partnership with leading AI chipmaker Nvidia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nvidia\u2019s supercomputers, which use graphic processing units, or GPUs, (the chips that often power AI), will be deployed at Cassava\u2019s data centers in South Africa from as early as June, before being rolled out across the company\u2019s other facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Africa has fallen behind the global AI boom due in part to a lack of computing power.\u00a0Analysis from Zindi, a community of 80,000 AI builders across 52 African countries, found that only 5% of Africa\u2019s AI practitioners have access to computational power for research and innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Better access to GPUs will help to \u201cdrive the AI revolution\u201d across the continent, says Alex Tsado, founder and director of Alliance4AI, a non-profit that helps African institutions adopt emerging technologies. Currently, there are no big GPU clusters in Africa and this is holding innovators back: \u201cIf you don\u2019t have access to GPUs, it takes you many more hours, if not days, to build the same solutions (or AI systems) than it would take someone else who is in a place where they do have access (like the US or Europe),\u201d he tells CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople start to see more reasons to gather data, because now they can process it; people start to see more reasons to train talent, because now there\u2019s GPUs \u2026 (It) triggers the ecosystem to accelerate all the progress that they\u2019ve already been making.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Cassava is yet to divulge details of its deployment plan, it said in a press release that Nvidia\u2019s GPU-based supercomputers will enable faster AI model training and that the data centers will ensure businesses and researchers have access to the AI computing power required to build, train, scale and deploy AI in a secure environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur AI factory provides the infrastructure for this innovation to scale, empowering African businesses, startups and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI infrastructure to turn their bold ideas into real-world breakthroughs \u2014 and now, they don\u2019t have to look beyond Africa to get it,\u201d said Masiyiwa in the press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The high cost of hardware relative to income levels in Africa has been one of the main barriers to AI adoption. Some of Nvidia\u2019s most powerful GPUs sell for as much as\u00a0$40,000. According to\u00a0AI4D, an African AI development program, the price of buying a GPU in Kenya represents 75% of GDP per capita, making it 31 times more expensive than one in Germany, in relative terms. This has led to a heavy reliance on foreign cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure \u2013 but these too are expensive, since it costs more, and takes longer, to transmit data between geographical regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Zindi\u2019s network of AI builders, the development of local data centers with Nvidia GPU-powered supercomputers <\/strong>will be a \u201cgame-changer,\u201d according to Celina Lee, its CEO and co-founder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy establishing Africa-based AI infrastructure, \u2018Zindians\u2019 would benefit from more affordable compute resources, faster access to AI tools, and lower latency, making it easier to develop and deploy AI models efficiently,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use of Nvidia\u2019s cutting-edge technology \u2013 the same that is used by OpenAI, Tesla, Meta, Google and other tech giants \u2013 will be a great equalizer, she adds: \u201cThis would democratize AI development, strengthen local AI ecosystems, and drive innovation across industries like agriculture, healthcare, and financial services, enabling more homegrown solutions tailored to Africa\u2019s unique challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could also help to increase Africa\u2019s representation in global AI training datasets. Currently, African languages and dialects are\u00a0underrepresented\u00a0due to a lack of data and there are often biases in training data, such as\u00a0facial recognition systems\u00a0that struggle with darker skin tones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWith increased access to AI infrastructure, African practitioners could train models using local datasets that better represent diverse demographics, economic systems, and environments,\u201d says Lee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tsado notes that there are still questions around how Cassava will overcome infrastructure challenges when building the factories \u2013 for instance Africa\u2019s unreliable power grids, which have put people off doing this earlier. And beyond access to GPUs there are still challenges with African end users running AI models efficiently because of their reliance on lower-grade smartphones with limited access to internet apps, says Lee.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But both agree that Cassava\u2019s move is a big step in the right direction. \u201cThis is a very welcome boost that Africa\u2019s big tech is finally joining the African AI communities \u2026 and spending some money on GPUs,\u201d says Tsado. \u201cStrive (Masiyiwa)\u2019s announcement is the first big public commitment that\u2019s been made, and it can trigger other people like him to do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s excitement bubbling in Kigali, Rwanda, ahead of the\u00a0Global AI Summit on Africa, which opens today, promising economic opportunities and innovation. Not least because of last week\u2019s\u00a0announcement\u00a0from Cassava Technologies, a tech firm founded by Zimbabwean telecoms billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, that it would be building Africa\u2019s first \u201cartificial intelligence factory,\u201d in partnership with leading AI chipmaker […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,21],"tags":[7,249,22],"class_list":{"0":"post-40330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"category-technology","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-technology"},"yoast_head":"\n