In a significant step towards strengthening South Africa’s digital and AI capabilities, Touchnet has partnered with Zadara to launch a sovereign AI cloud infrastructure at Digital Parks Africa’s state-of-the-art, carrier-neutral Uptime Tier III Design Certified Data Centre in Samrand, Gauteng.
This strategic deployment aims to empower local businesses with secure, high-performance access to GPU-accelerated cloud solutions optimized for AI workloads. GPU-based cloud servers are renowned for delivering increased computational power, making them ideal for modern applications such as machine learning, big data analytics, and generative AI.
The new sovereign AI infrastructure allows South African enterprises to run advanced AI applications locally, ensuring full data sovereignty — a critical concern for industries bound by strict compliance and data protection regulations. This approach aligns with global trends of countries seeking to keep their data within national borders, while also reducing latency for real-time processing needs.
Hosting the solution at Digital Parks Africa’s Samrand facility guarantees low-latency access to powerful compute resources, supporting real-time AI workloads that are essential for innovative sectors such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and education. This development reduces dependence on offshore cloud platforms, fostering local innovation through scalable, cost-effective access to advanced AI infrastructure.
Renowned for its energy efficiency and robust security, the Samrand data centre provides an ideal environment for sovereign cloud services. The collaboration between Touchnet and Zadara is expected to accelerate AI adoption across key industries, positioning South Africa as a regional hub for AI-driven digital transformation.
Zadara’s cloud solutions, already popular globally with over 500 cloud deployments and 250 partners across more than 24 countries, will now play a pivotal role in this local initiative, helping to unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth in South Africa.
