What if you work at a small nonprofit that wants to help farmers grow more nutritious crops, provide better care to mothers and their babies, or help young children succeed in school? Your staff has the knowledge, knows the community, and understands what needs to be done. But there is one big problem: you don’t have the technology to implement your ideas.
It’s a challenge many businesses are faced with when attempting to employ artificial intelligence (AI). Even though global adoption of AI tools is on the rise, the infrastructure and computing power necessary for creating sophisticated AI applications isn’t accessible across all regions.
That’s about to change, thanks to a partnership from Cassava Technologies and The Rockefeller Foundation.
Launched on 18 November 2025, the project seeks to provide more AI computing power for organizations supported by the Rockefeller Foundation in eight African nations—Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe—so that African innovators can put AI to work on solving the issues that impact their communities.
Why Does Access to AI Matter for NGOs?
For many nonprofits, the most common problem isn’t a lack of ideas; it is the resources to implement them.
You might be a non-profit organization in the agriculture space that needs to offer farmers instant updates on the weather, pests, and crop management. Or perhaps you’re a healthcare provider that needs to ensure pregnant women have access to the health information they need in their native language. Or you’re an ed-tech nonprofit that needs to support teachers and learners to work at their own pace.
AI may assist organizations in exploring them. But creating and operating state-of-the-art AI applications requires computing power, dependable infrastructure, a significant amount of know-how, and money.
In the absence of these tools, smaller organizations are often unable to get started with AI or scale up what has proven to be effective.
A partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation and Cassava Technologies is helping remove one of these obstacles; it offers access to computing capacity to selected grantees. Cassava’s AI infrastructure built on NVIDIA technology, enabling organizations to develop AI applications without having to build the entire computing infrastructure from scratch.
Technology access should not be limited by the size or wealth of an organization.
What Is AI Computing Power, and Why Is It Important?
Curious how all this AI stuff actually functions? The phrase “AI computing power” can be overwhelming, but here’s the thing: you can think of AI as a machine powered by electricity and processing power. Learning from data, identifying patterns, and generating results is what AI does. And the more complex the task, the greater the AI’s computational demands.
Visualize this: developing systems that comprehend native speech, crunching huge quantities of agricultural data, or processing health records require significant amounts of computing power. And what does that mean for you? Available resources let you develop, test, and deploy AI applications faster.
It’s going to allow African organizations to develop solutions that reflect their circumstances and needs, rather than importing solutions developed somewhere else.
Three Areas Where AI Could Make a Difference
The partnership highlights agriculture, healthcare, and education as important areas where AI can support social impact.
1. Helping Farmers Make Better Decisions
Ever wondered how farmers know when to plant or get rid of their troublesome pests? Many people wouldn’t believe it’s actually sometimes hard to get good farming advice, particularly in remote, rural areas.
For smallholder farmers, Digital Green is 1 team leading the way with its AI-powered platform Farmer. Chat. Farmer. Chat is a cool, new platform that provides dedicated guidance for farmers. Wouldn’t it be great to simply ask a question in your local language and get straight-up, actionable advice—no intimidating websites or tech manuals needed?
That is the kind of accessibility AI brings. However, despite the push for technology, advice, local farm conditions, and human input will have their place. Ever wonder just how much easier farming could be with technology like this in your hands?
2. Improving Healthcare for Mothers and Children
Do you imagine being pregnant or having an infant and being unable to access healthcare? That is reality for many women who face distance, not enough healthcare providers, or language barriers. Does that sound like your situation?
Here’s the thing: Jacaranda Health is leading the charge in Kenya with tech. The foundation says that they are building AI-powered apps to link mothers and babies with the information and support they need. We are totally on board with that.
Given computing power, they are developing multilingual AI models designed around the needs of communities. So, if you’re a mom-to-be looking for faster pregnancy and postnatal care advice, this might be a breakthrough for you.
Yes, of course, there’s no substitute for a doctor or nurse, and the information must be correct and safe. But, if we get it right, AI can enable organizations to scale their healthcare guidance to more people.
3. Making Learning More Accessible
Will AI change how you reach students? Yes! With Rising Academies’ commitment to improve education by using technology and supporting teachers in countries including Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, the potential to engage each student using AI is great!
Want to know about AI? Here’s what it could do for learners: What if AI learning tools were used to ease teachers’ workload, provide additional practice opportunities, and create more accessible learning? Think about all those teachers bogged down by repetitive practice. What about the learners? It’s extra practice in literacy and math.
The key: Technology is meant to support teachers, not take their place. A teacher, unlike a laptop, has better judgment about what each student needs and finds challenging. With computers available, initiatives like Rising Academies will be able to improve and personalize the digital tools they offer to their schools.
Why Local AI Infrastructure Matters
Where is all this computing power being developed and accessed? Picture this: one in five human beings across the globe resides in Africa, yet this vast region holds less than 1% of the world’s data center capacity. Can you sense the disparity? It’s not merely about quantity; it speaks to a broader issue. Crafting artificial intelligence (AI) involves more than dreaming up a brilliant concept or installing the latest app; you need data to fuel these innovations.
Think of what we could do with more computing in Africa. Indigenous entrepreneurs would be solving for Africa’s needs, creating support for African languages, and leaving some of the problems they see to the rest of the world’s AI products. It’s not just about the technologies NGOs have in hand today. It’s about changing the next version of AI.
But it’s not just in the roads themselves. It’s in the skilled worker, the data, the funding, the cybersecurity, and the ongoing maintenance. So, are you prepared for what’s coming, or are you simply hoping it doesn’t? Because the road to the future isn’t paved with good intention.
What Does This Mean for Smaller NGOs?
Although the initiative focuses on selected Rockefeller Foundation grantees, it raises an important question for the wider nonprofit sector: how can smaller NGOs benefit from the growth of AI?
Many grassroots organizations work with limited budgets and small teams. Their employees may spend considerable time preparing reports, collecting information, managing projects, and searching for funding opportunities.
Accessible AI tools could help reduce some of this administrative work, allowing teams to spend more time supporting the people and communities they serve.
For example, an NGO could use appropriate AI tools to organize project information, translate educational materials, analyze survey responses, or prepare an initial draft of a funding proposal.
But organizations should not adopt AI simply because it is becoming popular. They need to identify the problems they want to solve, assess the costs, protect sensitive information, and check the accuracy of AI-generated results.
The most useful technology is not necessarily the most advanced one. It is the technology that helps an organization do its work better without creating new problems for the people it serves.
The Challenges That Still Need Attention
Tapping into AI computing promise may be an exciting frontier, but can it deliver transformational impact for communities? So much of the promise of AI computing hinges on organizations being able to use it to make a difference. How to help nonprofits seamlessly adopt AI into their day-to-day work will be the first step.
But what about privacy? And NGOs do hold a lot of sensitive data: children, patients, survivors, and other vulnerable groups of people. All this information needs to be treated with respect, collected, stored, and used sensibly.
However, AI is not perfect. Sometimes it can go wrong, providing information that is not attuned to local context. So how do organizations use this information to their advantage and not to their detriment? By human oversight, reliable sources and robust validation.
And then there’s the sustainability problem. What if the money isn’t there or the materials become too expensive? A way forward for NGOs is to make practical plans for how to sustain the tools and services they offer.
These challenges highlight an important truism: there is no use providing access to an infrastructure without training, responsible governance, and sustained investment.
The Bigger Picture: African Organizations Shaping Their Own Solutions
The question of who will shape AI’s future sits at the heart of the Rockefeller Foundation and Cassava Technologies partnership. It points to leadership, direction, and responsibility in AI deployment. This collaboration invites careful consideration of local impact. Too often we use tools designed for other languages, distant markets, and unfamiliar social conditions. Those tools can help, but they rarely solve local or rural problems. A new level of locally informed innovation is urgently needed. Imagine the possibilities if African businesses and organizations had access to computing power to reframe this conversation. Rather than importing AI products from afar, local entrepreneurs could craft their own solutions using their knowledge and experience. This reframing matters for NGOs, which recognize that development starts with understanding the people involved. While technical help can be invaluable, the insight of local people must take the wheel.
Final Thoughts
The Rockefeller Foundation’s partnership with Cassava Technologies shows how investment in AI infrastructure can support organizations working on real-world challenges.
From helping farmers access agricultural advice to improving maternal healthcare information and supporting classroom learning, AI offers opportunities for nonprofits to explore new ways of reaching communities.
There is still work to do. Access to computing resources must be matched with training, funding, responsible data practices, and long-term support. And the success of these efforts should ultimately be judged by whether they improve people’s lives.
For NGOs, the lesson is worth remembering: AI is not the goal. Better healthcare, stronger communities, improved education, and more effective programmes are the goals.
The real opportunity lies in giving the people who understand these challenges the resources to build solutions of their own.
Add a practical NGO action checklistTighten repeated AI infrastructure points
<Link url=”https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/news/cassava-technologies-and-rockefeller-foundation-expand-access-to-artificial-intelligence-computing-to-african-ngos/” title=”Read the official announcement”/>.
