🌍 25 years ago, 70% of Africans had never heard a phone ring.
📆 Today, in some African cities, mobile penetration is sitting at 1.5 SIM cards per person. From the main stage of the Africa CEO Forum Annual Summit in Kigali,
@HardyPemhiwa, President and Group CEO of
@CassavaTech, used that contrast to frame three decades of African digital infrastructure history.
🛰️ The numbers behind Cassava speak for themselves. 116,000 kilometres of fibre running from Cape Town to Cairo. An interconnected data centre network across most African capitals, with edge facilities now being deployed in secondary cities. Captive renewable energy plants powering enterprise customers. And, most recently, the continent's first NVIDIA-powered AI factory launched last month in South Africa, with sites in Cairo, Nairobi and two further African locations now in advanced planning.
⚡ Pemhiwa called it the plumbing that carries the data, the plumbing that enabled Africa's telecoms revolution and that will now have to enable its AI one. Coverage is largely won. The next battle is meaningful access.
🇷🇼 Kigali is putting a clear question on the table this week. Will Africa be a producer of AI infrastructure, or only a consumer of it? Cassava's answer is being deployed at scale.
#ACF2026 #AfricaCEOForum