Data Centers in Africa

Why Choose Datacenters in Africa

Executive Summary: Datacenters Market in Africa

Africa's digital infrastructure market has shifted from a "connectivity-first" to a "power-first" era. Driven by the arrival of massive subsea cables like 2Africa and Equiano, the continent's bandwidth bottleneck has been solved, but the challenge has moved to the power grid. The market is bifurcating into a "pre-leasing" game, where hyperscalers snap up capacity before construction starts, leaving enterprise buyers with limited options in key hubs like Johannesburg, Lagos, and Nairobi. With development costs high ("$10M - $15M per MW") and vacancy tightening, early visibility into inventory is the only way to secure space.

Find colocation, interconnection, and AI-ready capacity across the continent, from the established digital gateways of South Africa to the rapidly emerging hubs in West and East Africa.

Africa Datacenter Market at a Glance

The African data center market is entering a phase of accelerated growth, with capacity expected to more than double from ~400 MW today to over 1.5 GW by 2030. However, this growth is uneven. South Africa remains the dominant force, holding nearly half of the continent's capacity, while Nigeria and Kenya are racing to catch up, fueled by fintech growth and cloud sovereignty mandates. The market is characterized by high reliance on backup power due to grid instability, meaning a data center here is effectively a private utility. Yet, for first-movers, the rewards are immense: a young, digitally native population of 1.4 billion people and a cloud market growing at 25-30% annually.

Major Data Center Hubs in Africa

South Africa

• Johannesburg is the undisputed digital capital of the continent, hosting the only fully mature cloud regions from AWS, Microsoft, and Oracle. It serves as the primary gateway for Southern Africa, with dense interconnection at NAPAfrica.
• Cape Town is the subsea cable landing hub, where major systems like 2Africa and Equiano make landfall, offering the lowest latency routes to Europe and the Americas.

West Africa

• Lagos (Nigeria) is the financial and media engine of West Africa. Despite power challenges, it hosts a vibrant ecosystem of carrier-neutral facilities connecting the region's largest banking and fintech sector.
• Accra (Ghana) serves as a stable, English-speaking alternative to Lagos, with more reliable power and growing connectivity to global networks.

East Africa

• Nairobi (Kenya) is the Silicon Savannah, running on a grid that is over 90% renewable (geothermal/hydro). It is the primary hub for East Africa, serving a tech-savvy population and a growing number of global content networks.

Africa's Regional Strengths for Colocation Buyers

Renewable Potential: Kenya leads the way with a grid that is nearly 100% renewable, allowing for green deployments without the need for complex offsets. South Africa is also rapidly privatizing its energy generation, opening doors for large-scale solar farms to power data centers directly. Massive Connectivity Upgrade: The activation of 2Africa (circling the entire continent) and Equiano (West Coast) has crashed the cost of international bandwidth and boosted redundancy, making it feasible to host latency-sensitive content locally rather than in Europe. Untapped Growth: With internet penetration still under 50% in many regions, the runway for digital growth is longer here than anywhere else. First-movers establishing a presence today are positioning themselves for the next decade of double-digit digital economy expansion. Sovereignty and Localization: Governments are increasingly enforcing data residency laws (e.g., Nigeria, Kenya), making local hosting a compliance necessity for financial, health, and government data.

How to Choose an African Datacenter Location

• Audit the Power Chain: In markets like Nigeria, don't just ask about the grid; ask about the diesel. Ensure the facility has at least 48-72 hours of on-site fuel storage and redundant generator strings, as the grid can be down for hours daily.
• Prioritize Connectivity Hubs: Look for facilities that host carrier-neutral Internet Exchange Points (like NAPAfrica, IXPN, or KIXP). These hubs keep 60-70% of traffic local, drastically improving user experience and reducing expensive transit costs.
• Check Renewable Reality: If ESG is critical, verify if the facility has a private PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) for solar or wind. In South Africa, relying solely on the Eskom grid means a high carbon footprint.
• Map the Subsea Access: Ensure your chosen facility has "On-Net" fiber access to the new subsea cable landing stations. Being stranded in a facility with poor backhaul to 2Africa or Equiano negates the region's connectivity benefits.

Countries and Cities for Datacenters in Africa

Use these guides to drill into local conditions: power reliability, subsea access, and provider options - for each key market.

• Data centers in South Africa - the continent's most mature market, offering cloud regions and massive interconnection density.
• Data centers in Nigeria - navigating the power challenges to tap into Africa's largest economy and fintech sector.
• Data centers in Kenya - the greenest grid on the continent and the gateway to East Africa's digital ecosystem.
• Data centers in Egypt - the critical bridge between Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, hosting the world's highest concentration of subsea cables.

Within each country, you can explore city-level pages like Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos, Nairobi, and Cairo, each with its own local insights and provider list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is power reliability a major risk in Africa? A: Yes, it is the primary operational challenge. In South Africa, "load shedding" (scheduled blackouts) is common, and in Nigeria, the grid is often the backup to diesel generators. Top-tier data centers mitigate this with massive on-site fuel reserves and redundant generator plants, often delivering better uptime than the national grid itself.

Q: How expensive is power in Africa? A: It varies wildly. In South Africa, grid power is roughly "$0.14 - $0.19/kWh". However, in markets like Nigeria, where diesel generation is the primary power source for many hours a day, the effective cost can spike to "$0.30 - $0.40/kWh" or more. Kenya offers a sweet spot with renewable grid power often priced competitively for industrial users.

Q: What is the impact of the 2Africa cable? A: Transformative. 2Africa is the longest subsea cable system in the world, circling the entire continent. It brings 180 Tbps of capacity - more than the total combined capacity of all previous cables serving Africa. It drastically lowers the cost of internet access and improves reliability by providing multiple diverse routes out of the continent.

Q: Are there hyperscale cloud regions in Africa? A: Yes. South Africa hosts full cloud regions from AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle. Kenya and Nigeria are seeing increasing investment from global cloud players, often starting with "Edge" nodes or Local Zones before expanding to full regions.