Egypt is planning to build its first large-scale artificial intelligence data centre, aiming for a 200 megawatt facility worth $1 billion, using Nvidia technology.
The project, announced on Wednesday by Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Raafat Hindi, comes as the world’s two main AI rivals — the United States and China — vie for a greater foothold in the Middle East and Africa.
The data centre is anticipated to start with a 20 megawatt facility worth $200 million in its initial three-year phase, built by a partnership between Vodafone Business, Elsewedy Electric, and Cassava Technologies — Nvidia’s main partner in Africa.
America’s Nvidia, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, is the key force behind the current AI frenzy.
The company’s graphics processing units (GPUs), housed in specially built data centers going up around the world, are used to train AI models.
The Egyptian data centre will “leverage Nvidia accelerated computing technologies”, according to Cassava Technologies.
Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to Egypt in a decade last week, Bloomberg had reported a bid from Huawei to build Egypt a data centre, which prompted Washington to push a rival offer from American companies Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft.
Xi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed to “expand cooperation” on artificial intelligence and technology, but did not sign concrete agreements.
Last Thursday, a day after Xi left Cairo, communications minister Hindi met with an unnamed “US consortium of data centre developers”, according to state media, which said Egypt was eager for international partnerships to make it a “regional data centre hub”.
AI infrastructure rollout has been slower in Africa than in other regions, partly because of weak electricity grids in many countries.
AI data centres consume massive amounts of electricity, up to five times more power than traditional data centres.
Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the second largest economy in Africa, has struggled to plug an energy deficit for years.
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