Africa’s expanding data centre sector is placing growing pressure on the continent’s electricity infrastructure, according to the African Energy Chamber’s State of African Energy 2026 Outlook.
Global demand for uninterruptible power supply for IT equipment alone is forecast to reach 249 GW by 2030, with total installed capacity, including cooling and ancillary systems, expected to climb to 374 GW. In African markets, where cloud adoption and mobile services continue to accelerate, this creates both infrastructure challenges and investment opportunities.
Data centres as anchor customers for power grids
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Unlike conventional electricity consumers, data centres require large volumes of reliable, uninterrupted power, creating predictable and bankable demand. That characteristic positions them as potential anchor customers for new-generation capacity and grid-expansion projects across the continent.
The sector’s growth also has broader economic implications. Data centre development supports job creation, stimulates local technology ecosystems and strengthens Africa’s position in the global digital economy. Hyperscale operators are increasingly prioritising renewable energy procurement, storage and demand management, trends that align with sustainability goals in data centre design.
Structural challenges remain
Despite the potential, significant hurdles persist. Reliable electricity supply remains uneven across many African markets, with frequent outages and limited grid redundancy undermining operational resilience.
Historically, Europe-based data centres served much of Africa’s digital demand. However, rising latency requirements and growing data sovereignty regulations, which increasingly mandate local storage, are making that model unsustainable. In response, global cloud providers are adopting pan-African strategies and establishing local infrastructure. Microsoft’s Azure data centres in South Africa marked an early move in this direction, and the trend has since accelerated.
South Africa leads, Kenya grows rapidly
South Africa remains the continent’s largest and most mature data centre market. With Microsoft and AWS cloud zones already operational and Google expected to follow, the country is shifting from a telecom-driven colocation model to a wholesale data centre hub. Current utilisation exceeds 83% and is projected to surpass 94% by 2030, with demand concentrated around Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Investment in the sector continues to grow. Teraco’s R8 billion JB7 data centre project in Johannesburg and Africa Data Centres’ expansion of its Cape Town facility reflect the scale of capital flowing into South African infrastructure. Teraco previously secured R11.8 billion in financing specifically for sustainable data centre expansion.
Kenya is emerging as East Africa’s fastest-growing hub, with approximately 40 MW of IT load capacity and a projected 30% compound annual growth rate through 2028. The market is being shaped by government digitisation policies, including the Konza National Data Centre under Kenya’s Vision 2030 programme. By 2029, total supply is expected to exceed 155 MW.
Nigeria is also seeing significant activity. Equinix’s expansion of its Lagos data centre underscores growing investor confidence in West Africa’s largest economy as a digital infrastructure hub.
NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber, said governments, investors and utilities will need to strengthen grids, enable multiple supply points and create conditions conducive to long-term infrastructure investment if the continent is to capitalise on the opportunity.
