US beats China in its AI race to Africa as Egypt inks a $1 billion data center deal with the world’s most valuable company

This new development was announced by the country’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Raafat Hindi.

The planned data centre is projected to be worth $200 million, boasting a 20-megawatt facility as part of its first three-year phase.

This project is being executed by Vodafone Business in collaboration with Elsewedy Electric and Cassava Technologies, which serves as Nvidia’s primary strategic partner within Africa.

According to Cassava Technologies, the facility in Egypt will use Nvidia’s accelerated computing technologies to support its operations, as seen on Arab News.

This move comes as the global battle for artificial intelligence dominance, particularly between the US and China, is moving deeper into Africa.

As the recent report indicates, NVIDIA seems to have emerged as the beneficiary of this AI play.

However, at the time, Huawei submitted a proposal to build AI data centres in Egypt, a deal that would deploy more than 2,000 of its advanced Ascend processors.

Huawei’s proposal includes 1,408 high-end Ascend 950-series processors for an AI training cloud.

A further 600 Ascend chips, either from the same series or the older 910B generation, would power two inference clusters used to run AI models after training.

Together, the proposed order would total 2,008 processors, with Huawei outlining a 12-month construction and deployment schedule.

The deal with the Chinese tech giant was expected to serve as a major African showcase as Cairo pursues a national AI strategy targeting a 7.7% contribution to GDP by 2030 while remaining heavily dependent on foreign suppliers for advanced processors.