Telecommunications company Vodacom and Google Cloud have entered into a strategic collaboration to accelerate digital transformation.

Leveraging Google Cloud’s advanced data analytics and AI product portfolio, Vodacom will enhance its core solutions and establish a powerful platform for creating new, disruptive products and services tailored for the African market.

“Integrating Google Cloud’s data and AI solutions into our business will modernise our infrastructure and fundamentally shift our operational paradigm,” says Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub.

“This collaboration is essential for us to build and deploy solutions that address the unique challenges and opportunities of the continent, ensuring the transformative power of AI is accessible to millions of customers and businesses across Africa.”

Under the terms of the collaboration, Vodacom will leverage Google Cloud’s secure, scalable infrastructure to unify its vast data assets and deploy generative AI models – including Gemini, Veo and Imagen – across its business.

This will enhance Vodacom’s operational efficiency and deliver new AI-powered services for consumers across Africa.

“By providing access to our most advanced generative AI models from Gemini and our leading data infrastructure, we are supporting Vodacom’s ambitious vision to build technology solutions that improve the lives of Africans,” says Google Cloud UKI and SSA VP Maureen Costello.

The collaboration centres around three strategic pillars: data modernisation and unification; accelerated AI adoption in Africa; and product innovation for the future.

Under the data modernisation and unification pillar, Vodacom will migrate and unify its critical data platforms onto Google Cloud’s data cloud, including BigQuery.

“This enables Vodacom to achieve real-time insights, enhanced data governance, and a single, secure source of truth for business decisions. This foundation is essential for deploying large-scale AI models.”

The accelerated-AI-adoption-in-Africa pillar will see Vodacom harness Google Cloud’s AI capabilities, such as Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and Google’s Gemini models, to rapidly integrate intelligent services into its offerings.

This includes optimising network performance, enhancing customer service with AI-powered personalised care and combating fraud through advanced machine learning models, effectively bringing powerful AI capabilities closer to African consumers.

Under product innovation for the future, Vodacom will focus on developing cutting-edge solutions for the African market using Google Cloud's AI capabilities.

Initial focus areas include creating new fintech services for greater financial inclusion, developing enterprise solutions and designing consumer experiences to improve content accessibility and education.