Nigerian technology company Udu Technologies has struck a partnership with South Korea’s BARO AI to expand access to high-performance computing infrastructure for governments, businesses and research institutions across Africa.
The agreement, signed on September 9 at the Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation Ministerial Conference in Seoul, gives UduTech access to BARO AI’s multi-GPU Poseidon servers. The hardware will be made available through UduTech’s AGH Cloud platform as the Nigerian company works to increase the computing resources available for artificial intelligence workloads on the continent.
The deal targets one of the major constraints facing Africa’s emerging AI industry: limited access to the specialised computing hardware required to train and operate advanced models. Brandspur Brand News reports that Africa accounts for less than one per cent of global data centre capacity and holds an even smaller proportion of the world’s GPU infrastructure.
Graphics Processing Units, or GPUs, are chips capable of carrying out large numbers of calculations simultaneously. That makes them particularly important for artificial intelligence, where training and running sophisticated models can require enormous amounts of computing power.
UduTech says African organisations procuring AI infrastructure can face hardware delivery periods stretching to 36 weeks when sourcing systems from major international suppliers. Bringing another supplier into its network could give the company more flexibility in responding to procurement requests, although delivery times and prices will continue to depend on the type and volume of hardware required.
BARO AI’s Poseidon servers could also widen the range of locations where such computing infrastructure can be installed. The systems use liquid-cooling technology and operate with reduced noise, potentially making them suitable for deployments at banks, telecommunications companies and government facilities outside conventional large-scale data centres.
Founded in February 2025 by former NVIDIA engineer Alexander Tsado, UduTech is developing distributed computing infrastructure designed to bring processing capacity closer to African organisations and their data.
Its AGH Cloud platform operates the Africa GPU Hub, with deployments in Nigeria and the United States. The BARO AI agreement adds another hardware source as the company seeks to meet growing demand for computing capacity from public and private-sector customers.
For BARO AI, the partnership provides an entry point into Africa’s expanding AI infrastructure market, where established international manufacturers currently supply much of the enterprise-grade GPU hardware.
The partnership comes as governments and businesses increasingly explore artificial intelligence for financial services, telecommunications, public services and other applications, placing greater pressure on the continent to develop computing infrastructure closer to its users.
Expanding local access to GPUs could reduce dependence on scarce overseas computing resources and give African organisations more options when deploying AI systems that require substantial processing capacity or involve sensitive data.
