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Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa's Cassava Technologies, Nvidia Corp.'s most prominent partner in Africa, is pressing on with a $720 million plan to build artificial intelligence data centers across the continent after Jensen Huang, the chipmaker's co-founder and the executive who championed the tie-up, resigned on Nov. 12.
Huang stepped down as Nvidia's president, chief executive and board member with immediate effect, ending a 33-year run at the company. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress is serving as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent successor. The board said it expects Nvidia's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.
Nvidia is both a supplier and an investor at Cassava, which Masiyiwa controls. It supplies the graphics processors that power its AI factories and owns a stake in the company, which is the first Nvidia Cloud Partner headquartered in Africa. Google is also a shareholder.
A 12,000-chip build-out
Cassava unveiled the plan in March 2025 with a target of putting 12,000 Nvidia GPUs to work across Africa. Masiyiwa said in November 2025 that Cassava had already bought all 12,000 chips and flown them in. Its first AI factory, near Cape Town, has 3,000 of the processors. Further sites are planned in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco over the next few years.
Huang and Masiyiwa promoted the project together. Masiyiwa said when he launched Cassava's GPU-as-a-service offering in Johannesburg in November 2025 that Africa had once been told there were only 80 Nvidia GPUs on the continent. Africa still holds less than 0.1% of the world's GPUs.
Cassava is not alone in building on Nvidia hardware in Africa. South African technology group Altron Ltd. said its Nvidia-powered facility went live in October. In Egypt, Cassava is working with Vodacom Group Ltd. and Elsewedy Electric on an AI data center, and Vodacom is now seeking partners to build similar facilities in South Africa and Kenya.
Kress takes charge
The leadership change comes at a delicate time for Nvidia, which lost about $600 billion in market value during the two weeks of turmoil that preceded Huang's resignation. The board had opened an inquiry into his conduct after reports of extramarital relationships and separate reports that he had been targeted by an alleged foreign intelligence operation. Kress will lead her first earnings call as interim chief executive when Nvidia reports third-quarter results on Nov. 17.
Masiyiwa's AI bet
Masiyiwa built his fortune with Econet Wireless, the mobile operator he founded in Zimbabwe in the 1990s after a five-year legal fight with the government for a license. He spun Cassava out of the Econet group and has made AI the center of its strategy, alongside its fiber network, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, and its data center business, Africa Data Centres.
Forbes ranks him as Zimbabwe's richest person. He lives in London and chairs both Econet and Cassava.
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