Vodafone, Elsewedy and Cassava Invest Up to $1B in Egypt Data Center
The partners will scale an Egypt data center from 20 MW toward 200 MW and also build the country's first sovereign AI data center.
Tariq Benali Tariq Benali covers business and corporate news across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted, tracking the deals, leadership moves and regulatory shifts behind the region's companies. tariq@anecdoted.com
Vodafone Business, Elsewedy Electric Group and Cassava Technologies have agreed to invest as much as $1 billion in Africa Data Centers Egypt. The project is built around a planned capacity of 200 MW, aimed at expanding the country’s digital backbone and the computing infrastructure that supports artificial intelligence.
The rollout is not starting anywhere near that size. During its first three years, the data center will operate at 20 MW. The companies then intend to climb to the full 200 MW target. In a statement issued Wednesday, Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the early phase is expected to bring in about $200 million in foreign direct investment.
Complementary strengths
Vodafone Business brings cloud and enterprise expertise. Elsewedy Electric knows how to build and run energy infrastructure. Cassava Technologies adds experience from data center projects across Africa. Together, the three partners will cover design, energy supply, and services for tenants.
The eventual site is meant to serve Egyptian organizations as well as international markets. Its expected users include major institutions, cloud providers, and global companies seeking a base in Egypt. The venture should also generate employment, with up to 200 direct and about 2,000 indirect jobs expected. Egyptian workers are expected to take part in construction, operations, and management.
Mohamed Abdallah, chief executive and managing director of Vodafone Egypt, described the initiative as a way to turn digital infrastructure investment into economic development. He noted that Africa still holds less than 1 percent of the world’s data center capacity.
A separate sovereign AI data center
In addition to the 200 MW project, Vodafone Business and Cassava Technologies are working together on what they describe as Egypt’s first sovereign AI data center. Nvidia technology will be delivered through locally hosted infrastructure. The center will operate as a GPU-as-a-Service provider, letting businesses and public entities rent accelerated computing for AI development and deployment instead of building their own systems.
Keeping data Egyptian is central to the project. All workloads would be hosted and processed inside the country. Ahmed El Beheiry, chief executive of Cassava AI, said the service gives Egyptian organizations the tools to develop AI capabilities while maintaining data sovereignty.
Government strategy in the background
These projects fit into a broader push by Egypt to become a regional hub for data centers, cloud services, and artificial intelligence. Communications and Information Technology Minister Raafat Hindi said the government is crafting a national data center strategy. The plan will emphasize storage and computing capacity, local and foreign investment, specialized training, and digital sovereignty.
Hindi also cited Egypt’s geographic location and submarine cable network as natural advantages. Those connections, he said, should help the country attract data hosting, cloud, and international technology investment.
