Super compute power at the university is claimed to be super costly: until AI infra is built out in Zimbabwe, Econet’s customers can access Econet group’s S African AI factory
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe is positioning itself as a provider of AI capabilities for customers under the umbrella brand Econet AI. It offers the Yamurai AI-powered chatbot and virtual assistant, alongside business solutions such as OmniContact AI and is to add consulting to help business leverage the AI offers.
Or as TechZIM put it:” It’s tools + consulting + platforms” and reported that the operator “even talked about working directly with CEOs and leadership teams, not just IT departments”.
Where’s the compute coming from as Zimbabwe lacks AI factories? Cassava Technologies, part of the wider Econet Group/Global which also owns Econet Wireless Zimbabwe.
Access to Cassava’s ecosystem
The newly branded Cassava AiCloud service is hosted at the Cassava AI Factory in South Africa, claimed to be the only facility of its kind in Africa. Econet Group launched Cassava Technologies in 2021 and is a key shareholder
As Mobile Europe has reported, Cassava is rapidly building an African AI ecosystem: powering ahead on data centre capacity, via its subsidiary Africa Data Centres; building its own AI factories through an alliance with NVIDIA; and building sovereign cloud solutions for African governments.
At the press conference, Econet alluded to plans to build AI infrastructure within Zimbabwe itself but at an unspecified time in the future: Econet Group’s founder and majority owner, the billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, has said he will build the Econet Tech City near Harare Airport and additional data centre expansion within it.
Just too expensive
In the meantime, TechZIM reports that developers in the country are complaining about being charged tens of thousands of dollars for access to the high-performance computer at the University of Zimbabwe to work on AI. Also, access is often allocated in blocks, not on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The Econet Wireless announcement could be a game-changer for the country’s AI development. The operator is also to offer subscribers six months of free access to Google’s Gemini model, starting in May.
This is not the only way Masiyiwa is looking to shake up the country’s economy.
$1bn flotation on US-denominated exchange
AfricaBusinessInsider noted last week that Masiyiwa, drove “a major shift in Zimbabwe’s capital markets”, as Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX) overtook the 132-year-old Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in market value.
At the end of March, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe was delisted from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) after 28 years on the local currency exchange. The infrastructure and property portfolio were hived off into the Econet InfraCo which includes the group’s tower infrastructure, fibre infrastructure and data centre operations.
Last week Masiyiwa listed Econet InfraCo on VFEX, valuing it at $1 billion which meant VFEX surpassed the value of its venerable rival. VFEX is a US-dollar denominated securities exchange based in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. It was created in 2020 to attract hard-currency investments and avoid big currency fluctuations.
Legal dispute in Zimbabwe
In March, a judge sitting in the Commercial Division court in Harare ordered the dispute between Econet Wireless Zimbabwe and Telecontract to be fast-tracked through the courts. The two operators have swapped voice traffic between their networks for inbound and outbound call termination. The arrangement ran smoothly for years until a dispute arose in January when Telecontract noticed sudden disruption to traffic on the network.
It sought an interim court order to force Econet to restore full interconnection services, accusing it of unauthorised restriction on its network traffic, until the regulator can resolve the dispute. Econet had objected, but its objection was overruled by the Commercial Division court in March.
Note that Econet Wireless Zimbabwe and Ericsson signed a memorandum of understanding at MWC 2026 in Barcelona collaboratively to design, test and deploy 5G in Zimbabwe. It did not include deadlines or coverage details, but stressed the AI angle. The operator had launched the country’s “First 5G network building programme” with Ericsson and ZTE in 2022.
