Cassava Technologies and AXON Networks have announced a strategic partnership to co-develop, deploy, and manage what they believe to be Africa’s first end-to-end Operator-as-a-Service (OaaS) platform.
Customers and service providers will leverage AXON’s AI-ready, real-time, multi-tenant, digital twin-enabled platform across Cassava’s high-speed fibre backbone to connect people and businesses across the continent.
“As businesses of all sizes continue to digitise their operations, the need is for cost-effective, flexible, high-performance network solutions that reduce time-consuming manual design and configurations,” says Hardy Pemhiwa, president and group CEO of Cassava Technologies. “By partnering with AXON Networks, we are moving beyond traditional hardware-centric infrastructure to create a truly programmable, AI-managed network, which will significantly reduce operational costs and increase access to customers and service providers.
“This transformation allows us to treat our pan-continental fibre network as a dynamic digital platform, enabling us to provision and modify customer networks in near real-time, rather than days or weeks. We are going beyond connectivity to becoming a partner in the digital transformation journeys of our customers.”
This AI-first connectivity platform becomes the foundation for accelerating digital transformation for African businesses of all sizes, including other telecommunications service providers. The Operator-as-a-Service platform will deliver secure, private, high-speed data infrastructure, enabling mobile network operators, LEO satellite providers and internet service providers (ISPs) with unprecedented agility, intelligence, and reach. It is designed to support these service providers in unlocking new opportunities for growth, innovation, and AI adoption.
“Partnering with Cassava, with its unmatched fibre footprint across the continent and investment in AI-enabled data centres, to integrate our Operator-as-a-Service platform with real-time digital twin technology at this scale, is incredibly exciting,” says Martin Manniche, CEO and founder of AXON Networks.
“We’re not just mirroring networks — we’re virtualising an entire infrastructure into a live AI-driven ecosystem that will leverage this extensive backbone, including Cassava’s planned AI-powered factory, to bring growth, prosperity, and the promise of AI sovereignty to Africa and its people.
“This is a transformational opportunity to provide the foundational platform for the AI economy across the African continent and redefine the future for generations to come, and we couldn’t have found a better partner than Cassava to bring this vision to fruition.”