Morocco's $1.2B DC a go in Cassablanca, Tanzania cardiac unit AI lab
Weekly News Digest ...
Good morning, and welcome to this week’s issue of Africa AI News – Weekly News Digest.
There is a surreal air to the AI industry right now with the ongoing and catastrophic war in Iran and Lebanon drawing the world’s attention away from the AI circus. But timing is everything, and the global AI behemoths are still frantically fuelling the hype machine as things start to fall apart around them (Stargate, Sora).
Right now, the likes of OpenAI and XAI are exclusively addressing a private equity and institutional investors, desperate to convince them they will ever make their money back… if they just open their chequebooks for one last, big push. Best they get an epidural because this is a $2 trillion baby they are going to have to squeeze out, where the AI stuff is being tied to anything hot and cash generating. Like xAI tied to SpaceX, and xAI valued at “only” $250 billion. Which is the market cap 65th largest company in the ENTIRE WORLD, just behind companies that have actually ever made money, like Nestle, Shell and Phillip Morris.
That leaves the rest of the AI industry to try talk to people who do have a clue, but it’s not clear if those they’re talking to aren’t perhaps also running before they walk and putting all their eggs in one basket.
The hype bubble is not popping, so much as wheezily softening, and the taps are running dry for funding. It’s consolidation time!
So we’re going to turn our eyes from empty hyperscaler spectacle and look at some small, real and technically advanced developments here at home. Like Token.ai, which launched what appears to be the first open source, open access LLM from Egypt, and which does pretty good claimed benchmarks, beating the latest 4B OSS model out from Google, Gemma 4.
Should we be impressed? Let us know in the comments, and like and subscribe.
On with this week’s issue.
/Roger
Datacentres and COEs
Moroccos $1.2bn in AI data centre finds a home
#Morocco #datacentre — More information on Morocco’s $1.2 billion AI datacentre mooted in June last year (reported in MiddleEastAINews.com). This major AI-focused data centre will be built in Nouaceur, outside Casablanca. It is being developed by an international consortium of Nexus Core Systems (project execution), Naver Cloud platform operations), and NVIDIA (processors). Finance through Lloyds Capital, and TAQA Morocco for energy supply, with a focus on renewable sources to power the facility sustainably. (AF Net)
Liquid C2 launches Google Cloud-powered AI experience centre
#Africa #CoEs — Liquid C2 has launched a Google Cloud-powered AI experience centre to accelerate enterprise adoption, a first in Africa. The facility enables businesses to test solutions, access expertise and deploy scalable cloud technologies. (Engineering News)
Orange Maroc partners Technopark to boost startup innovation
#Morocco #applications — Orange Maroc has partnered with Technopark Maroc to accelerate innovation and support startups through a new AI-focused initiative. Signed at GITEX Africa 2026, the collaboration introduces the “AI Garden” programme, offering cloud, cybersecurity and connectivity resources to help startups develop and scale solutions. (TechAfrica News)
LLMs
Egypt’s Token AI releases open source Horus model
The Horus-1.0 series consists of text generation models, fully trained from scratch in Egypt on trillions of clean training tokens, says developer Assem Sabry. Horus-1.0-4B, featuring an 8K context length, with original and compressed weights for use on different hardware. A transformer-based architecture, it balances computational efficiency with exceptional knowledge density. It is open source and available from TokenAI’s site. (TokenAI)
Policy
African cities lag global peers in smart city index 2026
#Africa #policy — Nine African cities feature in the IMD Smart City Index 2026, but none rank in the global top 100, highlighting structural constraints. Rabat leads the continent at 124th, followed by Cairo and Cape Town, with the index emphasising that governance, institutional strength and citizen trust outweigh technology investment as key determinants of smart city performance. (deep dive in Africa AI News)
EU and Morocco set up Digital Dialogue to strengthen partnership
#Europe #policy — The EC’s VP for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, and Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, Morocco’s Minister Delegate in charge of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform, signed the agreement on Wednesday. Areas of collaboration: rollout of secure, trusted digital networks and infrastructure, supporting the deployment of AI compute infrastructures, advanced cooperation between Moroccan AI research institutes and EU AI Factories, and supporting start-ups. (European Commission)
Botswana minister drives digital push with China, Austria visits
#Botswana #policy — Botswana’s Minister of Communications and Innovation, David Tshere, will visit China and Austria to strengthen its digital transformation. He will meet with Huawei and attend the China Information Technology Expo, targeting infrastructure expansion, AI integration and skills development. The Austria leg is under the remit of the International Atomic Energy Agency. (TechAfrica News)
Uganda partners with UK to expand digital skills and AI learning
#Uganda #education — Uganda’s Ministry of ICT and National Guidance is partnering with the British High Commission to scale digital skills and AI-enabled learning nationwide. The initiative focuses on curriculum development, teacher training and infrastructure support, aiming to equip young people with future-ready competencies while strengthening bilateral cooperation. (ICT Uganda)
Rwanda boosts AI strategy through capacity building initiative
#Rwanda #education — The Government of Rwanda is advancing its AI strategy with a targeted training initiative for its Chief Digital Officers, aimed at strengthening practical knowledge and application of AI in governance. This is being done with the help of Cenfri, a World Bank aligned development NGO. (TechAfrica News)
South Sudan to ratify Kigali AI conference resolutions
#SouthSudan #policy — South Sudan will ratify resolutions from the Kigali AI conference to strengthen its innovation ecosystem. Officials say the move will guide national policy, promote skills development and encourage investment as the country seeks to align with regional frameworks and accelerate digital transformation despite massive infrastructure and capacity challenges. (Eye Radio)
South Africa opens draft AI policy for comment - but still no document
#SouthAfrica #policy — AfricaAINews.com covered South Africa’s Cabinet approving the draft AI policy for public comment last Friday. The framework ostensibly prioritises ethical deployment, skills development and inclusive growth. There has been some in-depth meta-analysis. But where is the draft policy? If you can find it, let us know. (Analysis: ITWeb)
Applications
Tanzania cardiac institute launches AI and robotics lab
#Tanzania #applications — The Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute has launched a new AI and robotics laboratory to enhance specialised healthcare delivery. The facility will support advanced diagnostics, surgical precision and medical research, positioning the institute at the forefront of digital health innovation in East Africa while improving patient outcomes and expanding training opportunities for clinicians. (The Citizen - paywall)
IBM and Elsewedy scale enterprise AI in Egypt
#Egypt #implementation - IBM and Elsewedy Electric are deploying agentic AI across operations using watsonx, covering supply chain, HR and finance. With over 30 use cases identified, the partnership reflects a shift from experimentation to structured, enterprise-wide AI adoption in Egypt. (Zawya)