For years, the story of tech in Africa has followed a pretty frustrating script: we produce the raw talent, and then that talent moves to San Francisco, Paris, or Dubai because the “big machines” aren’t at home.
However, it appears that Morocco is weary of such a story. They are basically establishing a wall against brain drain with the opening of the Nexus AI Factory so that they can place a flag as the best high-tech sovereign in the continent.
This is not some other warehouse with flashing lights. It is a 12-billion-dirham initiative with major players such as Nvidia and Naver, and it aims to fix an issue that most people would not even consider an issue: Data Sovereignty.
Consider it in the following manner-At the present, the majority of African AI startups must lease the brains of US or European servers. Whenever they do so, their data exits the continent. The Nexus project of Morocco is meant to retain such data within their homestead.
They are establishing a place where a Moroccan developer can develop world-class tech without having to take out a visa or an international cloud subscription, by developing this hub in Nouaceur.
See also: South African startup that is making powerful AI run without data centres
What is, in fact, impressive here–and, frankly speaking, pretty clever–is the power play. AI is a power hog as we all know. It consumes power as madly as it can. But Morocco is bending into its green power wave by collaborating with TAQA Morocco.
The goal?
A renewable AI factory. It is some kind of a stretch to the rest of the world: Morocco is not only entering the AI race, but they are also attempting to run it in a more environmentally friendly fashion than those who initiated it.
One can see that it is obvious when you look at a map. Morocco is the digital mediator of the last resort, with 15 kilometers between it and Europe and its feet squarely in Africa. Jaap Zuiderveld and the team at Nexus Core Systems aren’t just looking at the local market; they’re looking at those submarine cables. They aspire to be the centre of Mediterranean-Atlantic convergence digitally.
Naturally 12 billion dirhams is a big amount of money and there is a strain to demonstrate that it is not a glittering trophy project. We’ve seen “tech cities” fail before. However, with a specialization in high-density computing (what you really need to make drugs or climate models)
Morocco is no longer at the stage of basic software, but is deep-tech.In the event that this is effective, it will not only be concerning the 125 jobs that will be created during the first phase. It will be concerning the thousands of Moroccan and African engineers who have finally something to be staying.
