The swift global adoption of AI, alongside Africa’s rapid tech growth, increasingly suggests the feasibility of an AI factory on the continent.
- The Aeonian Project aims to establish an AI factory in Africa, leveraging advanced computing infrastructures to retain data processing locally.
- The project will use surplus electricity from Uganda’s Karuma power plant to power a 10MW sovereign AI supercomputer built in collaboration with NVIDIA.
- This initiative intends to support diverse fields such as healthcare, education, and research through localized AI development and model creation.
- Similar projects, like Project Mufungi, show a broader movement towards empowering Africa with self-reliant AI capabilities and robust digital infrastructures.
The Aeonian Project, which is being touted as potentially being Africa’s AI factory, is now set for a swift rollout, with the first phase of the deployment scheduled for the second half of next year.
SEE ALSO: Zimbabwe’s richest man and the world’s 10th richest man push for Africa’s first AI factory
At the core of the initiative, the Aeonian Project says that intends to retain critical computing power within the continent, reducing Africa’s dependence on foreign entities storing its data.
With its focus on AI, the project would also ensure that homegrown researchers and developers would build AI models in local languages, which would be rooted in African data, an objective that sounds all too familiar.
As seen on the KenyanWallStreet, the project’s central component, the USIO, a 10MW sovereign supercomputer, was built in partnership with NVIDIA, AI infrastructure company MDCS.AI, and Automation NV of Belgium.
It will use 100MW of surplus pre-transmission electricity from the Karuma power plant in the East African country.
“In the same way gold and oil once shaped economies, digital tokens will shape the next era of innovation. Africa must not just mine data, but also mint intelligence, the machine targets to support applications in healthcare, life sciences, higher education, and research,” said Niels Van Rees, Co-Founder of MDCS.AI.
In addition to using modular technologies to recycle heat and relying on natural river water for cooling, the plant will be connected to a new 2,500km fiber optic backbone that connects Uganda to international cables via Kenya and Tanzania.
Another of ‘Africa’s first AI factories’ between Zimbabwe’s richest man and the world’s 10th richest man
In July, it was reported that much like the Aeonian Project, “Project Mufungi” via Cassava Technologies, owned by Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwe’s richest man, would be partnering with Nvidia to build the first Artificial Intelligence (AI) factory in Africa.
This initiative encompasses setting up Nvidia’s high-performance AI processing infrastructure in Cassava’s data centers across Africa.
Egypt’s Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria will be added after South Africa in June 2025.
“Collaborating with Nvidia gives us the advanced computing capabilities needed to drive Africa’s AI innovation while strengthening the continent’s digital independence,” Masiyiwa said in a press release.
Cassava Technologies said back in April that it had intentions of investing up to $720 million in the AI plant.
The objective of the project is to provide African companies, researchers, and startups with local access to cutting-edge AI power so they may create their own AI models and solutions.
The Aeonian Project
As per its official website, “Synectics Technologies is developing The Aeonian Project, which is a hybrid Tier-4 Plus (4+) off-grid green energy regional Hyperscale Data & High-Performance Computing Centre (DHPC) powered by 100MW of excess pre-transmission electricity from the government-owned 600MW Karuma Hydro Power Plant (K-HPP) in Uganda.”
To connect the facility to the company’s headquarters in Kampala, for remote surveillance, and to the submarine cable in Kenya for global connection, data is sent via two (2) core dark fiber optic cables that are leased.
Data transfer between the two neighboring landlocked nations will be facilitated by the cable’s alternate arm.
Colocation, blockchain, data storage, artificial intelligence, and on-demand cloud services are the areas in which the suggested service provider falls.
Additionally, existing data centers in the area will get Disaster Recovery Services (DRaaS) from the Center.
