Google, Huawei Target African Cloud Market to Develop AI-Powered Smart Cities

Key Takeaways

• Google and Huawei are among the largest funders of Africa’s digital infrastructure.
• Projects like Huawei’s new cloud initiative in Egypt are helping support the development of new smart cities in the region.
• Technology companies are exploring new opportunities to deliver AI services to African cities.

Global Big Tech firms including Google and Huawei are expanding their cloud footprint in Africa, building new infrastructure to equip digitally connected “smart cities” up and down the continent.

While Africa’s digital transformation has traditionally lagged behind Europe’s and North America’s, it is finally starting to gain traction thanks to economic growth, international investment, and booming demand. 

Africa’s Cloud Journey

Although it was among the last geographies they entered, all three major American hyperscalers now operate cloud regions in Africa.

Microsoft was the first to move in 2019, opening Azure regions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, although the latter was closed in 2021. Amazon Web Services followed suit with its own Cape Town-based data center in 2020. Finally, Google also made the leap this year, launching its first African cloud region  in Johannesburg in January.

Taking a different route into the continent from the U.S.-based Big Techs, Huawei has opted to establish its African presence from the north.

Huawei Enters Egypt

After announcing  a five-year $430 million investment initiative last year,  Huawei launched  a new cloud region in May 2024, operated out of Cairo servicing 28 countries including Egypt, Ethiopia and Algeria. 

Building on that development, Huawei has now partnered  with Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG) to develop new cloud and AI solutions for the Egyptian market. 

Under the agreement, TMG will leverage Huawei’s technology in the Noor Smart City project in East Cairo.

Africa’s Smart Cities

Consisting of 5,000 plots with integrated solar electricity, waste management, business districts and public amenities, Noor City is designed to embody “the future of urban living,” TMG says in promotional materials.

And neither is Egypt the only African country pursuing the smart city concept.

From Tanzania’s Silicon Zanzibar to Kenya’s Konza Technopolis, smart cities are popping up all over the continent, creating hyperconnected digital hubs for Africa’s growing middle class and nascent startup ecosystems.

Often found on the outskirts of established urban centers, smart cities don’t solve all of Africa’s problems. But they do provide important development opportunities in countries where building infrastructure can be challenging.

Alongside Big Tech cloud providers and multinational property developers, regional telecommunications companies are also jumping on the smart city train.

Enhancing Connectivity

One of the biggest players is Vodafone Group, whose subsidiaries Vodacom and Safaricom are involved in smart city projects in Southern and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the company’s latest commitment to the continent’s digitalization, Vodafone has partnered with Google to expand AI services in African markets.

The technological backbone for the initiative will be provided by Google Cloud, itself made possible by the thousands of miles of fiber optic cabling the firm has laid in Africa in recent years.

From intercontinental subsea cables to local internet initiatives connecting communities, Google has funded some of the largest digital infrastructure projects in the region, investing a billion dollars  over the course of five years.