You’ve heard of Africa’s “first AI factory,” right? Cassava Technologies made sure we did, with their loud and proud announcement back in March. But over in Europe, Germany is doing its own version of that.
Deutsche Telekom, Germany’s equivalent of Econet, if you rolled Liquid Intelligent Technologies and Econet Wireless into one company, is partnering with Nvidia to build Europe’s first industrial AI cloud.
The project should go live in 2026 and is meant specifically for manufacturers like Volkswagen, Bosch, Siemens etc.
The idea is that instead of shipping European industrial data off to American clouds like AWS or Microsoft Azure, they want to keep things local, secure, and efficient. I guess it’s kind of like an AI cloud “made in Germany, for Germany.”
And of course Nvidia is involved. They’re sending 10,000 chips to power the whole thing. That might sound like nothing. However, Nvidia’s high-end AI chips, like the H100, go for around US$30,000 to US$40,000 each.
So you’re looking at hardware worth well over US$300 million before you even talk infrastructure, power, cooling or software. This is serious money.
The project will use Telekom’s infrastructure and Nvidia’s GPUs to offer what they’re calling “sovereign AI solutions.” Basically, Germany doesn’t want to be caught lacking, relying on U.S. or Chinese infrastructure.
With the whole trade war situation, you can understand why Germany doesn’t want to be left stranded should something crazy happen.
Neither does Africa
If you’re thinking you’ve heard this before, you’re right. Cassava Technologies is doing something similar.
Cassava’s “AI factory” is set to launch in South Africa this year, with Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco next. They’re also using Nvidia hardware (because if it doesn’t say Nvidia, it’s not AI, is it?), but their focus isn’t on factories and industry.
Instead, Cassava wants to give African startups and researchers access to proper AI infrastructure. Right now, most African AI projects run on overseas clouds. That means latency issues, data sovereignty headaches, and dollar-denominated cloud bills that price too many startups out.
Cassava says their goal is to build regional AI hubs that let developers, healthcare researchers, fintechs and even agri-tech startups train their models locally. It’s AI for the people, not just for the factories.
Kinda the same thing
So what’s the key difference?
For Germany it’s industrial AI for manufacturing. High performance, but centralised.
For Africa it’s distributed AI “factories” for everyone, from fintechs to farmers.
But at the core, it’s all the same idea. The goal is to own your data, run your models locally, and not depend on foreign clouds. Whether you’re in Berlin or Bulawayo.
Now, whether Cassava can pull it off remains to be seen. But, Germany’s giving us a glimpse of what that can look like when infrastructure, cash, and policy are all there. Africa’s trying to get there too and for now its hopes rest on Cassava delivering.
Leave a Reply