Cassava Technology's Strive Masiyiwa Keynote Presentation

You know, whenever somebody says people have taken time out of their busy schedules, it's usually reserved for not so busy people. So I hope that's not what she meant. But welcome everyone. It's great to see everybody. All protocols observed. I'm sure that their excellencies, their honorable ministers who are here, senior government officials. So really glad that you're here this morning. My name is Hardy Pure. As I was introduced, I'm the president and group CEO of Cassava Technologies. We are Africa's leading digital infrastructure and digital solutions provider. And we're not just across the African continent. We now operate in the Middle East. We operate in Latin America. We operate in the USA and we also operate in Europe. So Africa is well represented globally with Cassava Technologies. A lot of people have said why cassava? It's a great question which we get all the time. We do support agriculture with tech. But we are not in the business of farming cassava. But cassava is the most widely eaten carbohydrate on the African continent. From Eastern Cape to West Africa to North Africa, you will find cassava in the markets of Iika in Lagos and in the palaces of presidents in Kinshasa. So hence the name Cassava. Technology is meant to be accessible, ubiquitous, available to everybody that can speak any language. And that's why we're here today.

But today, it's my honor to introduce a man who has for more than three decades been at the forefront of Africa's technology revolution, a pioneering entrepreneur, and one of the continent's most influential voices. As far as digital transformation is concerned, he's the founder and executive chairman of Cassava Technologies. He's the visionary behind this Pan-African story that I just described, which is now a global tech company of African heritage, covering connectivity, collocation, cloud, cyber security, fintech, and now AI. We're serving millions of people across this continent. More than 120,000 kilometers of fiber. As you can see from that map, our coverage map says we now cover more than 550 million people across 650 cities across the continent of Africa. We are supported by our shareholders in this endeavor, led by the Econet Group who are our founding shareholders, Royal Bafokeng Holdings, the Public Investment Corporation of South Africa, the Fund for Export Development in Africa, part of the Africa Export Import Bank, the US Development Finance Corporation, the British International Investment, formerly CDC Group, the Finnish Fund for Industrial Development, Gateway Capital Partners, and most recently, both Google and Nvidia have joined as shareholders of Cassava. So it's really a proud moment for us to be able to share the new things that we're doing in AI. We have strategic partnerships with some of the world's leading global tech players. Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, OpenAI, Mistral, Anthropic, all of them have come to us in order to drive their own digital products and solutions across the continent. They come to us because as we say to them, we speak African. They may speak the language of Silicon Valley, but when it comes to Africa, we know what works here and we know what moves the needle.

You know, nowadays, if any of you have got younger kids, they will tell you that if it's not on video, it doesn't exist. So we thought it would be great to just show a couple of videos from some of our partners talking about the partnerships that we have with them.

For years, Google's been investing across the continent. We just recently announced that we've exceeded our $1 billion pledge to expand connectivity around the continent, including some recent subsea cable investments. And today, we're taking it one step further by announcing a new partnership with Cassava Technologies and Gemini. And the partnership has two parts. The first part is that Africans will be able to access Gemini with data-free access. So that means you'll be able to use it without any data charge. And second, millions of Africans are going to get access to our Google AI Plus plan for free. Now, this AI Plus plan comes with some amazing benefits like access to the latest, most powerful Gemini model, 200 GB of free storage, and you'll be able to try out our cutting edge video and image generation models. This will all be rolling out soon across nine countries in Africa to start, including places like Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and here in South Africa. We're so excited about what millions of Africans are going to be able to learn and build and create, and we're excited to be doing it with Cassava. Thank you.

At Anthropic, we recognize that the future of AI must be shaped not just by a few companies or countries, but by diverse perspectives from around the world. Africa's rapidly growing tech ecosystem has much to contribute to this global conversation. At Anthropic, we've already begun this journey through a strategic partnership with Cassava Technologies. Together, we're working to advance AI-based cloud services across Africa, integrating Claude's capabilities with Cassava's infrastructure. AI is projected to contribute 15.7 trillion dollars to global GDP by 2030. The true measure of AI's value lies in how these technologies are deployed to solve real world problems and improve lives. Through our collaborative efforts, Anthropic is working to ensure that Africa can not only leverage AI-driven services, but play a meaningful role in AI development and innovation.

First of all, congratulations to Cassava AI for launching the AI factory. This is a huge milestone for the African AI ecosystem and it presents a big opportunity for startups like GAA all over the continent that are building native AI solutions. With Cassava's AI factory here on the continent, we can now build AI models for agriculture that are by farmers and for farmers here in Africa itself. And we can then crowd in other organizations that serve farmers, telecom operators, insurers, financiers, market players that can build their own applications on top of Farmer Chat and this AI infrastructure without having to reinvent the wheel.

Hi everybody, George Mendes here from SEC. Just like to take the opportunity to thank Cassava Technologies for the AI factory that will be built in South Africa. I think quite clearly this will strengthen the ecosystem fundamentally. Also very grateful that they'll have sovereign data protection if you like. Super computing power and of course this is the direction of travel. So on top of an existing already amazing relationship we'd like to congratulate you and wish you the best of success for an organization like Jacaranda Health. It's a game changer. Our mission is to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes and your new infrastructure directly empowers our work. Having access to high performance local AI compute will allow us to build faster, more responsive and more intelligent health solutions for the mothers and babies that we serve. Ultimately, your work will help us save more lives.