Craig van Rooyen - Chief Commercial Officer for Wholesale and Public Sector, Liquid Intelligent Technologies SA.

At the intersection of trust, innovation, and delivery lies the foundation of South Africa’s digital future. For Craig van Rooyen, Chief Commercial Officer for Wholesale and Public Sector at Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa, a business of Cassava Technologies, meaningful transformation happens not just through talk, but through verifiable impact.

“Our success is rooted in enabling sovereign, orchestrated digital solutions that address South Africa’s real needs across infrastructure, government, communities, and the economy,” says Van Rooyen. “We combine our capabilities across connectivity, cybersecurity, cloud, colocation, AI and payments into a unified, African-led value proposition.

”Cassava has built a conduit for digital transformation across two of South Africa’s provinces – the Eastern Cape and Western Cape – by laying high-speed fibre infrastructure that connects over 5 000 schools, hospitals, clinics, and libraries. This work has enabled WiFi services in rural communities, unlocking educational opportunities and health digitisation.

“In clinics and hospitals, patients can now benefit from digitised health records; in rural libraries, learners access digital resources they never had before,” notes Van Rooyen. “This isn’t just infrastructure. It’s crossing the digital divide and bringing dignity and opportunity to thousands.”

Additionally, Cassava’s fibre links to strategic national ports and rail infrastructure, providing the backbone for smarter, more efficient trade and logistics operations. The rollout of connectivity to gantries and traffic surveillance systems on national highways is paving the way for South Africa’s transition to intelligent transport networks, reducing congestion, supporting public safety, and enhancing national economic productivity.“

These are not hypothetical benefits. These are national assets – roads, ports, utilities, central banking infrastructure – that rely on secure, localised digital infrastructure to function effectively,” says Van Rooyen. “That’s what we provide.”

Cassava’s strength lies in its vertically integrated ecosystem: 

• Liquid Intelligent Technologies drives connectivity and IP transit 

• Africa Data Centres delivers Tier III colocation with a national footprint 

• Liquid C2 ensures enterprise-grade cloud and cybersecurity 

• Cassava AI, through its partnership with NVIDIA, offers GPU-as-a- Service for sovereign AI compute 

• Sasai Payments is a diversified and integrated Fintech business offering digital financial services, covering mobile wallets and cross-border payments.“

We are the only African tech company combining these capabilities at scale,” Van Rooyen says. “Our GPU infrastructure supports applications like speech recognition, image processing, predictive analytics, and AI-driven service automation – all vital to modernising public services, finance, healthcare and logistics.”

Unlike other large cloud providers governed by foreign laws, Cassava offers sovereign infrastructure – owned, operated, and legally safeguarded within South Africa. “This means our AIaaS and cloud offerings comply with PoPIA, enable localisation of data, and support local SMEs and skills development,” adds Van Rooyen.

This sovereignty extends to AI orchestration: Cassava enables public sector clients to develop and deploy models built on African data, for African challenges — from multilingual interfaces to smart utilities management and fraud detection in social services.

Van Rooyen believes that policy and procurement reform is vital. “The state must prioritise cloud-first strategies, open data standards, and centralised procurement to avoid fragmentation and unlock scaled investment,” he says. “Digital infrastructure should be treated as national infrastructure, just as roads, water, and electricity are.”

Cassava continues to work closely with South Africa’s national digital stakeholders, supporting the goals of NDP 2030 through inclusive broadband, smart city enablement, ICT skills development, and public-private partnerships that foster innovation.

With over 110 000km of fibre across the continent, pan-African reach, and a growing network of Tier III datacentres, Cassava Technologies is not just participating in the digital economy, it is building its foundation.

“We believe in solutions that are secure, scalable, and sovereign,” concludes Van Rooyen. “Our work is not about showcasing technology – it’s about delivering national impact.”

www.cassavatechnologies.com