The African Energy Chamber (AEC) is launching an AI and Data Centre Track at this year’s African Energy Week (AEW), the body said on 4 May. The new track will run alongside the main programme of the AEW conference, scheduled for Cape Town from 12 to 16 October, and is positioned as a forum for aligning policymakers, investors and technology firms around the energy demand created by digital infrastructure.
The pitch is that data centres are no longer a separate conversation from power generation. As AI workloads, cloud computing and digital services scale, the IT-equipment uninterruptible-power-supply demand is forecast globally to reach 249 GW by 2030, with total installed capacity climbing to 374 GW. Africa’s penetration is still well below other regions, but the trajectory is the same one global markets travelled in the last decade.
What the track is for
“Africa has a unique opportunity to leapfrog legacy systems by aligning its energy growth with the digital economy,” said NJ Ayuk, the AEC’s Executive Chairman. “Data centres and AI are not just consumers of power, they are catalysts for investment, innovation and access. If we structure this correctly, we are not just powering servers; we are powering economies and closing the energy access gap at scale.”
The Chamber’s argument is twofold. First, large data centres provide bankable, predictable demand for energy investors, the kind of long-tenor offtake profile that supports utility-scale generation finance. Second, the same offtake strengthens the case for new generation capacity and grid expansion, with knock-on benefits for the local markets where data centres land.
The track will also tackle regulatory and fiscal frameworks. The AEC says it is working with governments on policy that supports parallel data-centre, AI and energy expansion, with input from world-class operators on what bankability looks like.
The track has been branded “NexaGrid Africa: Create. Enable. Build Africa’s Finest AI Data Centers for the Future.” Lagos-headquartered Heirs Energies signed on as a Gold Sponsor and has deployed Starlink-powered connectivity at its remote Nigerian oilfield sites for real-time monitoring and IoT integration, an early example of the kind of energy-and-digital convergence the new track is built around.
Where Africa is starting from
South Africa leads the continent’s data-centre footprint, with Microsoft and AWS cloud zones already live and Google’s Africa cloud region expected to follow. Kenya carries roughly 40 MW of IT-load capacity with a projected 30 percent compound-annual-growth rate through 2028, according to figures cited by the AEC. Africa-wide mobile-data usage is forecast to quadruple per mobile by 2028.
Latency requirements and a tightening web of data-sovereignty regulations are the structural drivers behind the shift away from European-hosted Africa traffic and toward domestic data centres. African energy demand more broadly is projected to more than double by 2040.
A continuing AEC thesis
The new track builds on a thesis the AEC has been developing for several months. In February, the Chamber published analysis arguing that data centres would reshape Africa’s power markets as digital demand outgrew existing generation plans. The same body’s African Mining Week 2026 also added an AI track, framing AI as both a tool for resource exploration and a demand accelerator for the power needed to extract those resources.
On the ground, the AI-density thesis is already shaping operator behaviour. Vertiv recently installed chilled-water cooling at Inwi’s Rabat data centre to handle higher rack densities tied to AI workloads, and Africa Data Centres expanded its fibre footprint in Gauteng through an Oni-Tel partnership in April. AEW 2026’s October agenda will reveal whether the AEC’s policy-and-finance frame can convert these point projects into the gigawatt-scale planning the Chamber is calling for.
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