For the past six years, Tsado’s teams at Alliance4AI, a global non-profit promoting AI adoption in Africa, and Udutech, an African AI infrastructure company, have quietly built what they call Africa’s “AI backbone.” Their mission: provide high-performance computing to African innovators at affordable rates, enabling AI development on the continent, by Africans, for Africans.
“We believe Africa should not repeat its mistakes from the age of oil, when it didn’t build refineries,” Tsado told TechCabal. “In the age of AI, GPUs are the refineries; they process data to unlock knowledge and automate progress.”
Building Africa’s First GPU Hub
In August 2025, Udutech launched the Africa GPU Hub, a platform offering GPU access for less than $1 an hour. Based in Lagos, the hub connects local servers with GPU clusters across Africa and beyond, giving startups, universities, and research institutions the computational power to train and deploy AI models without prohibitive costs.
The shared-hub model spreads operational costs — including electricity, cooling, and staffing — across multiple users, making AI-grade hardware affordable and scalable.
Powering Nigeria’s “AI Primes”
Udutech aims to nurture 10 Nigerian AI Primes — locally grown companies capable of serving over a million users each. Alliance4AI supports this mission by mobilising $8 million worth of GPUs through philanthropic partnerships, providing subsidised or free access for students and innovation hubs.
“We’re receiving requests for more GPUs from the Nigerian AI startups we support. That’s why we’re raising a new round, to meet that demand and accelerate their growth,” Tsado said.
While global GPU production is dominated by Nvidia, with alternatives costing billions to develop, Africa’s immediate challenge is deploying, maintaining, and eventually designing GPUs locally. Udutech has partnered with Chipmango, a Nigerian chip-design startup, aiming to source locally designed AI chips within three to five years — a step toward self-reliance in computing infrastructure.
Nigeria’s Growing AI Infrastructure Ecosystem
Udutech’s initiatives coincide with broader investments across Nigeria:
- Cassava Technologies, founded by Strive Masiyiwa, is partnering with Nvidia to deploy AI GPU clusters across Africa for healthcare, agriculture, and finance applications.
- MTN Nigeria launched the Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre, West Africa’s largest Tier III facility, to power AI and cloud workloads.
- Airtel Africa partnered with Xtelify to deploy AI-driven network optimisation across 14 markets.
These moves reflect a continental push to build, train, and deploy machine learning models within Africa, supported by telecom, cloud, and AI infrastructure investments.
The Long Road Ahead
Despite the momentum, local GPU manufacturing remains a distant goal. Nigeria currently assembles or imports computers, lacking the capital and fabrication infrastructure to produce chips. The global epicentres of GPU production remain concentrated in Taiwan, South Korea, China, and select U.S. states.
Tsado stresses that progress begins with ownership of the ecosystem rather than the chips themselves — ensuring African innovators can access and control computational power.
“If the oil refineries of the 20th century defined Nigeria’s industrial era, the GPU hubs of the 21st may well define its digital one,” Tsado said.
Nigeria’s efforts signal a strategic push to position the country — and Africa — as a competitive force in the AI revolution, ensuring the continent participates meaningfully in the next wave of technological transformation.