Egypt plans to build its first large-scale artificial intelligence data center, aiming for a 200-megawatt facility worth $1 billion, using Nvidia technology.
The project was announced Sept. 9 by Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Raafat Hindi. It comes as the United States and China compete to expand their influence in the Middle East and Africa through artificial intelligence and technology.
The data center will initially be developed as a 20-megawatt facility costing $200 million during its first three years. The project will be built through a partnership between Vodafone Business, Elsewedy Electric and Cassava Technologies, Nvidia’s main partner in Africa.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, has become a major force behind the current growth of artificial intelligence. Its graphics processing units are used in specially designed data centers around the world to train AI models.
According to Cassava Technologies, the Egyptian facility will use Nvidia’s accelerated computing technologies.
Before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to Egypt in a decade last week, Bloomberg reported that Huawei had submitted a bid to build a data center in Egypt. The report said this led Washington to encourage a competing proposal from U.S. companies Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft.
Xi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed to expand cooperation in artificial intelligence and technology but did not sign any specific agreements.
On Sept. 3, one day after Xi left Cairo, Communications Minister Hindi met with an unnamed U.S. consortium of data center developers, according to Egyptian state media. The report said Egypt was seeking international partnerships to become a regional data center hub.
The development of AI infrastructure has been slower in Africa than in other parts of the world, partly because many countries have unreliable electricity grids.
AI data centers require large amounts of electricity and can use up to five times more power than traditional data centers.
Egypt, the most populous Arab country and Africa’s second-largest economy, has faced an energy shortage for several years.
