According to CoinMeta, Africa’s largest mobile communications operator MTN Group will collaborate with Dubai-based billionaire Tariq Al Ashram to develop data centers in Africa. Al Ashram stated that he will invest through his own investment company in the newly established Africa Data Hub Holding joint venture. Although Africa lags behind in global artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure construction, with its AI data centers accounting for less than 1% of the world’s total, Al Ashram believes that Africa now presents “equally attractive opportunities.” The CEO of MTN, Mupita, said that the joint venture plans to initially build a 150-megawatt AI data center and set up data centers in Nigeria and South Africa to handle the workloads of MTN itself, while also leasing out computing power to hyperscale cloud service providers, other corporate clients, and governments.