Ethiopia’s COOP Bank Partners Huawei on AI-Powered Green Data Centers

Ethiopia’s financial sector is entering a new phase of digital acceleration, with Huawei Digital Power and the Cooperative Bank of Oromia (COOP) unveiling AI-powered, energy-efficient data centers designed to handle the country’s fast-rising appetite for mobile banking and digital transactions.

The partnership, announced in Addis Ababa, is set to transform how COOP Bank supports its more than 15 million customers. With over 80% of the bank’s transactions now happening digitally, the existing infrastructure had reached its limits. Frequent risks of outages, limited capacity, and inefficient cooling systems were bottlenecks that threatened to slow down financial inclusion efforts.

Huawei’s solution centers on two key innovations: the FusionModule2000 and the UPS5000-E. The FusionModule2000 is a modular unit that integrates racks, power, cooling, cabling, and monitoring sensors in a compact design. Its modularity allows the bank to scale infrastructure as demand grows, avoiding costly over-provisioning. The UPS5000-E, meanwhile, provides a highly efficient, hot-swappable uninterruptible power supply, ensuring banking services remain online even in the face of Ethiopia’s frequent power instabilities.

AI will be woven into the heart of operations. From predicting equipment faults before they happen to optimizing cooling and power consumption, AI-driven monitoring promises to reduce downtime, cut energy waste, and keep costs under control. In a market where every kilowatt-hour is expensive, these efficiencies are crucial.

For COOP Bank, the numbers speak volumes. Its mobile banking platform alone has processed more than ETB 3.6 trillion (about $24.7 billion) in transactions. That scale demands infrastructure capable of supporting millions of concurrent digital interactions without fail. The new data centers are expected to deliver greater reliability, improved security, and disaster recovery capabilities that were missing from its legacy systems.

Beyond technology, the project is being framed as a catalyst for financial inclusion. Ethiopia, like much of Africa, sees digital banking as a route to bring underserved and rural populations into the formal financial system. More reliable data centers mean fewer interruptions in mobile services, smoother transaction flows, and wider trust in digital payments.

The “green” label is also more than marketing. Huawei says the new systems will cut operational energy costs through smarter power management and cooling, aligning with global and regional pushes for sustainable technology. But the question of where the power itself comes from remains. If the grid feeding these centers still leans heavily on non-renewables, the sustainability impact may be limited.

There are other risks too. Vendor dependency is one. Ethiopia’s deepening reliance on Huawei mirrors a broader African trend, which has geopolitical and strategic implications given Huawei’s contested role in global telecoms and IT infrastructure. There’s also the issue of human capacity: advanced systems need skilled engineers for maintenance and troubleshooting, a gap that Ethiopia must address to avoid over-reliance on foreign expertise.

Still, the immediate gains are hard to ignore. A scalable, modular, AI-optimized data center backbone should help COOP expand without the technical fragility that could have undermined its ambitions. If executed well, this move positions the bank not just as a financial leader, but as a digital infrastructure pioneer in Ethiopia’s evolving economy.

The bigger test will be whether this model can serve as a template for other Ethiopian institutions and whether the efficiencies translate into affordable, reliable digital finance for the millions still on the margins of the banking system.