Egypt is preparing to establish its first major artificial intelligence data center, with plans for an eventual 200-megawatt facility valued at approximately $1 billion and powered by technology from Nvidia.

The initiative, announced Wednesday by Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Raafat Hindi, comes as the United States and China compete to expand their influence over artificial intelligence infrastructure and technology markets across the Middle East and Africa.

The project is expected to begin with a 20-megawatt data center costing about $200 million during its first three years. The initial phase will be developed through a partnership involving Vodafone Business, Elsewedy Electric, and Cassava Technologies, Nvidia’s primary partner on the African continent.

Nvidia, the US-based technology giant and the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, has emerged as a central player in the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence.

Its graphics processing units, or GPUs, are installed in specialized data centers around the globe and provide much of the computing power required to train advanced AI systems.

Cassava Technologies said the Egyptian facility will “leverage Nvidia accelerated computing technologies.”

The announcement follows growing competition between Washington and Beijing over Egypt’s AI infrastructure. Before Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first visit to Egypt in a decade last week, Bloomberg reported that China’s Huawei had proposed building a data center in the country. The proposal reportedly led the United States to encourage a competing initiative involving American technology companies Nvidia, AMD, and Microsoft.

During Xi’s visit, he and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi agreed to “expand cooperation” in artificial intelligence and technology. However, the two countries did not announce any specific agreements resulting from the discussions.

One week ago, on the day after Xi departed Cairo, Egyptian Communications Minister Hindi met with an unidentified “US consortium of data center developers,” according to Egyptian state media. The report said Egypt was seeking international partnerships with the goal of becoming a “regional data center hub.”

The expansion of AI infrastructure has progressed more slowly across Africa than in many other parts of the world. One significant obstacle has been the unreliable or underdeveloped electricity infrastructure in several African countries.

AI-focused data centers require enormous quantities of electricity, with their power consumption potentially reaching five times that of conventional data centers.

Egypt, which has the largest population among Arab countries and ranks as Africa’s second-largest economy, has itself faced persistent challenges in meeting its energy needs, including a longstanding electricity shortfall.