Morocco Lands $1.2 Billion Deal for Africa's First Sovereign AI Data Centre

A consortium of Nexus Core Systems, Nvidia, Naver, and Lloyd Capital has signed a memorandum of understanding to build the Nexus AI Factory near Casablanca, Morocco, a $1.2 billion project described as Africa's first sovereign AI infrastructure platform, after Morocco beat out South Africa and other rivals for the site.

The Build

Announced at GITEX Africa 2026 in Marrakech, the project targets up to 500 megawatts of AI supercomputing capacity built around Nvidia Blackwell GB200 GPUs. Phase one, in Nouaceur near Casablanca, will bring 16MW of IT load capacity, with a second 20MW phase planned for Northern Morocco; both phases are targeted for construction in 2027. The facility will run on 100% renewable power supplied under a contract with TAQA Morocco, and Naver Cloud will operate the platform, providing integrated AI cloud services. The project is expected to create around 125 direct jobs by 2027.

A Regional AI Gateway

The Nexus AI Factory is intended to provide sovereign AI computing services across the Europe-Middle East-Africa region, making Morocco an AI and data gateway linking Africa to Europe and the Gulf. The win fits into Morocco's broader national strategy to make AI a $10 billion contributor to GDP by 2030, alongside plans to train 200,000 AI graduates and create 50,000 AI jobs over the same period.

Why it matters

Morocco's win over South Africa in competition for the project underscores intensifying rivalry among African nations to host large-scale AI compute infrastructure, and marks one of the first instances of a Korean cloud operator and US infrastructure developer jointly anchoring a sovereign AI platform on the continent rather than routing African AI workloads through data centres abroad.