By: Nana
Appiah Acquaye
Vodafone has announced two
major data centre partnerships in Egypt, including a joint venture to develop
the country’s largest data centre and a separate project to establish Egypt’s
first sovereign artificial intelligence data centre.
Mohamed Abdallah, CEO of
Vodafone Egypt and Vodacom International Markets, announced the projects as
part of Vodafone’s plans to strengthen Egypt’s position as a regional hub for
digital infrastructure and AI.
The first initiative, Africa
Data Centers Egypt, is a joint venture between Vodafone Business, Elsewedy
Electric and Cassava Technologies. The facility will have an initial capacity
of 20 megawatts, with a planned pathway to scale up to 200MW.
The second initiative is a
partnership between Vodafone and Cassava Technologies to develop Egypt’s first
sovereign AI data centre. The facility will enable data to be hosted within
Egypt and is intended to support the country’s national digital priorities.
Abdallah said the
investments are aimed at addressing the significant gap between Africa’s
population and its share of global data centre capacity. Africa is home to
nearly 20 percent of the world’s population but accounts for less than 1
percent of global data centre capacity, according to Vodafone.
The planned data centre
investments are expected to expand Egypt’s capacity to support cloud computing,
artificial intelligence, digital services and other data-intensive technologies
while strengthening the country’s digital infrastructure.
The sovereign AI facility is
also expected to provide infrastructure that supports local data hosting and
the development and deployment of AI applications in line with Egypt’s digital
priorities.
Abdallah expressed
appreciation to Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology,
Eng. Raafat Hendy, as well as Vodafone’s partners at Elsewedy Electric and
Cassava Technologies and the Vodafone Egypt team involved in advancing the
projects.
