Nigeria is gearing up to spearhead Africa’s forthcoming technological revolution, driven by the essential hardware behind artificial intelligence (AI): graphics processing units (GPUs). Leading this visionary effort is Alex Tsado, a former Nvidia executive instrumental in deploying AI GPUs to global cloud platforms, now dedicated to ensuring Africa remains competitive in the AI landscape.
Over the last six years, Tsado and his teams at Alliance4AI-a global nonprofit advocating for AI adoption across Africa-and Udutech, a company focused on AI infrastructure and implementation within the continent, have been quietly constructing what they term Africa’s “AI backbone.” Their goal is straightforward: to provide affordable, high-performance computing resources to African innovators and foster an ecosystem where AI is developed locally, by Africans, for African needs.
“Africa must avoid repeating the errors of the oil era, when it failed to build refineries,” Tsado explained. “In today’s AI era, GPUs serve as the refineries-they process data to generate insights and drive automation.”
Establishing Africa’s Premier GPU Center
In August 2025, Udutech unveiled the Africa GPU Hub, a platform offering GPU rentals tailored to African market affordability, with rates under $1 per hour. Based in Lagos, this hub links local servers with GPU clusters across Africa and internationally, granting developers the computational power necessary to train and deploy AI models without prohibitive expenses.
This initiative echoes the early days of cloud computing but is uniquely adapted to Africa’s context. Udutech’s hub enables startups, researchers, and developers to remotely access AI-grade GPUs, bypassing the need for costly imports or complex on-site setups.
Much like telecommunications towers or electrical grids, GPUs represent capital-heavy infrastructure. A single company investing in a handful of GPUs can develop AI applications serving millions, recouping costs within a year. However, upkeep is costly-operators typically allocate 20-30% of GPU expenses annually to power, cooling, and personnel. Udutech’s shared infrastructure model distributes these costs among multiple users, achieving economies of scale.
Empowering Nigeria’s AI “Primes”
Udutech’s commercial vision is to cultivate at least ten Nigerian “AI Primes”-locally founded companies capable of scaling to serve over a million users each. Complementing this, Alliance4AI has secured approximately $8 million worth of GPUs through philanthropic collaborations, offering free or subsidized access to university students and innovation hubs continent-wide. This support helps emerging AI talents develop competitive solutions and attract further investment.
Tsado notes the demand is surging: “Requests for additional GPUs from Nigerian AI startups are pouring in. We’re currently raising funds to meet this growing need and accelerate their expansion.”
Globally, Nvidia dominates the GPU market, powering nearly all contemporary AI models. The barriers to entry are formidable; for instance, Google has invested over $5 billion attempting to create alternatives. Africa’s immediate challenge isn’t manufacturing GPUs but building the expertise to deploy, maintain, and eventually design them.
To this end, Udutech has partnered with Chipmango, a rising chip-design startup training Nigerian engineers in semiconductor development. Their ambition is that within three to five years, Udutech will procure locally designed AI chips optimized for African conditions-a significant stride toward technological self-sufficiency.
Nigeria’s Expanding AI Infrastructure Landscape
Udutech’s emergence coincides with Nigeria’s AI infrastructure sector gaining momentum. Grand View Research reports that Nigeria’s GPU-as-a-Service market generated roughly $18.7 million in 2024, with projections to nearly double to $35 million by 2030.
Cassava Technologies, a digital infrastructure firm founded by billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, is collaborating with Nvidia to establish Africa’s first “AI Factory.” This initiative deploys advanced GPU clusters across the continent, including Nigeria, to support AI-driven applications in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and finance.
Telecommunications companies are also investing heavily. MTN Nigeria recently inaugurated the Sifiso Dabengwa Data Centre, West Africa’s largest Tier III facility, designed to support AI and cloud workloads with competitively priced local services. Airtel Africa has entered a multi-million-dollar partnership with Xtelify to implement AI-powered network optimization software across its 14 markets. These developments reflect a continental shift, with the GSMA reporting significant investments by operators in digital infrastructure-from 5G rollouts to edge computing-enhancing Africa’s ability to develop, train, and deploy machine learning models domestically.
Challenges and the Path Forward
Despite this progress, Nigeria faces substantial hurdles. Local GPU manufacturing remains a distant prospect due to the enormous capital, supply chain complexity, and fabrication facilities concentrated in a few global regions-primarily Taiwan (TSMC), South Korea (Samsung), China’s Shenzhen/Guangdong area (assembly and integration), and increasingly, select U.S. states focusing on AI and advanced modules.
Currently, most Nigerian hardware firms focus on assembling or importing computers rather than fabricating semiconductor chips.
Nonetheless, Tsado emphasizes that true advancement begins with controlling the ecosystem-not necessarily owning the chips themselves, but securing the capacity to compute.
Just as oil refineries defined Nigeria’s industrial era in the 20th century, GPU hubs may well become the cornerstone of its digital era in the 21st century.