Cassava Technologies and Rockefeller Foundation Expand Access to AI to African NGOs
Cassava Technologies (Cassava) (www.CassavaTechnologies.com) has entered into a new partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation to Expand Access to AI to African NGOs for social impact across Africa. The collaboration builds on Cassava’s bold plan to establish the continent’s first AI factory powered by NVIDIA’s advanced AI infrastructure, a move that will significantly expand access to high-performance computing for African innovators. Through this initiative, Cassava will make compute resources available to several of The Rockefeller Foundation’s grantees operating in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe.
This joint effort aims to position Africa as an active contributor to the global AI economy, which is projected to reach US$1.2 trillion (http://apo-opa.co/3XEsfHC). By equipping local organisations with cutting-edge AI tools, the partnership is expected to boost productivity, unlock innovation, and support projects that are directly improving livelihoods across the continent.
Hardy Pemhiwa, President and Group CEO of Cassava Technologies, noted that AI represents a transformative opportunity for Africa’s youth and its broader economic trajectory. He emphasized the importance of investing in ecosystems that allow African developers to build solutions tailored to local realities. With the forthcoming AI factory running on NVIDIA infrastructure, startups, public institutions, universities, and enterprises will be able to develop AI applications grounded in African data, languages, and cultural contexts. Pemhiwa described the partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation as a significant step toward strengthening Africa’s AI capacity.
Despite accounting for nearly one-fifth of the world’s population, Africa currently commands less than 1% (http://apo-opa.co/48gsdvP) of global data center capacity. As the continent’s AI market—currently valued at about US$5.17 billion—continues to expand, the need for local computing power is becoming even more critical. The Rockefeller Foundation’s President, Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, highlighted that when properly harnessed, AI can catalyze improvements in health, agriculture, and education. He reaffirmed the Foundation’s belief that scientific and technological advances should benefit everyone, and that empowering African innovators is essential to shaping an inclusive digital future.
Through this collaboration, both organizations aim to support African-led breakthroughs in essential sectors such as healthcare, learning, and agriculture. Initial beneficiaries include:Digital GreenWorking in Ethiopia and Kenya, Digital Green uses AI to provide smallholder farmers with localized, real-time agricultural insights that enhance productivity and resilience. According to CEO Rikin Gandhi, the availability of GPUs within Africa will dramatically advance capabilities in speech-to-text, translation, image recognition, and retrieval-augmented generation—making AI-driven agricultural support more accurate, scalable, and accessible for millions of farmers
Jacaranda HealthJacaranda Health is leveraging AI to strengthen maternal and child healthcare delivery in Kenya. Co-Executive Director Cynthia Kahumbura noted that local access to high-performance computing will help scale culturally relevant, multilingual AI models, enabling pregnant women and new mothers to receive life-saving information in their native languages. This technological support is expected to reduce maternal deaths and foster more informed healthcare decisions.
Rising AcademiesActive in Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, Rising Academies is using AI to enhance learning outcomes for more than 250,000 students. Fidele Hagenimana, Head of Rwanda Programs, shared that AI tools have already helped teachers reduce grading time by 60% and have improved access to literacy and numeracy content. With student engagement rising, the organization aims to expand the use of inclusive, locally adapted AI tools to reach even more learners.
