Africa accounts for only 0.6 percent of global data-centre capacity, highlighting a widening infrastructure gap even as worldwide investment in digital infrastructure accelerates toward an estimated $3 trillion over the next five years.
This insight is contained in a new report by the Africa Data Centres Association titled “Data Centres in Africa 2026: The Economic Report,” which examines the continent’s evolving position within the rapidly expanding global digital infrastructure market.
The report highlights a sector growing quickly but still struggling to keep pace with global expansion, raising questions about digital sovereignty, economic competitiveness and Africa’s readiness for artificial intelligence-driven growth.
Global data-centre boom accelerates
According to the study, the global data-centre industry is undergoing an unprecedented expansion driven by increasing demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence workloads and digital connectivity.
The market, valued at $243 billion in 2025, is expected to double by 2032, with analysts citing strong investment momentum across developed and emerging economies. Estimates from Moody’s and JLL indicate that nearly $3 trillion will be committed to data-centre development globally within five years, while the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reports that data-centre projects accounted for more than one-fifth of global greenfield foreign direct investment in 2025.
The report describes data centres as “digital gold,” reflecting their growing strategic importance as foundational infrastructure supporting AI systems, cloud platforms, financial services and digital public services.
Several technological shifts are driving this rise. Cloud adoption continues to move enterprise workloads away from on-premise systems, while AI training and inference workloads are rapidly increasing infrastructure requirements.
Forecasts cited in the report suggest AI alone could triple global data-centre capacity demand by 2030, accounting for roughly 70 percent of incremental growth.
Additional pressures from video streaming, e-commerce expansion and Internet-of-Things adoption are further accelerating demand.
Despite rising investment pipelines, Africa’s participation in the global market remains limited. While the United States hosts roughly 45 percent of the world’s data centres, Africa contributes less than one percent of global capacity, with its share projected to expand only proportionally with global growth rather than closing the structural gap.
Currently, the continent hosts an estimated 220 to 230 data-centre facilities across 38 countries, with infrastructure heavily concentrated in a few regional hubs including South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria.
The African data-centre market is projected to reach $9.2 billion by 2029, yet most African nations still depend on offshore hosting services. Estimates from development institutions suggest the majority of data generated within Africa is stored abroad, primarily in Europe and North America. This reliance introduces complex geopolitical and economic risks.
Data sovereignty and strategic risks
The report argues that data centres now sit at the centre of national competitiveness because their ownership and geographic location determine how digital information is governed.
Data hosted outside the continent is subject to foreign legal jurisdictions, limiting governments’ control over sensitive information and raising concerns around sovereignty and regulatory autonomy.
African enterprises and public institutions also remain heavily dependent on global cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, many of whose core infrastructure assets remain located outside Africa.
Ownership patterns further compound the issue. While some governments are investing in national facilities, most large carrier-neutral data centres and hyperscale campuses are financed by foreign private equity and operated by international firms.
Meanwhile, supply-chain vulnerabilities persist because critical equipment, including servers, semiconductors and networking hardware, is almost entirely imported, exposing African infrastructure development to global trade tensions and export restrictions.
Regulation advancing faster than enforcement
Progress has been made on the policy front. More than 40 African countries have enacted data-protection legislation and established regulatory authorities, while 19 nations have ratified the Malabo Convention on cybersecurity and data governance.
However, the report notes that enforcement capacity often trails legislative ambition, limiting the practical impact of regulatory frameworks.
AI ambitions driving infrastructure urgency
The findings come amid growing continental ambitions around artificial intelligence development. The report highlights 2025 as the year of the Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence, which secured $60 billion in commitments toward building AI capabilities and established an Africa
Industry leaders argue that achieving data sovereignty will require substantial local computing power.
Ayotunde Coker, chief executive officer of Open Access Data Centres (OADC), said Africa’s digital independence depends on expanding local processing capacity supported by sustainable energy systems and AI infrastructure aligned with regional priorities.
Capacity expansion outpaced by global growth
Africa’s data-centre capacity is projected to triple by 2030, reaching approximately 1.2 gigawatts of total IT load. However, global capacity is expected to quadruple during the same period, driven largely by massive AI-focused campuses in the United States and Asia.
Even within existing African markets, utilisation levels remain uneven. The report noted that outside South Africa, live IT capacity represents only about one-third of total built potential. In South Africa itself, roughly 74 percent of installed capacity is fully fitted and operational.
This “occupancy gap,” analysts say, reflects infrastructure being built ahead of demand but also signals significant long-term growth potential.
Despite major investments in subsea cable systems, internet adoption across Africa continues to lag infrastructure availability.
A 2025 study cited in the report found that consumers in low-income African countries may spend up to 26.4 percent of average monthly income on internet access. While network coverage gaps have narrowed to around nine percent of the population, the usage gap remains substantial at roughly 64 percent.
Although about 47 percent of Africans are mobile subscribers, only 28 percent actively use mobile internet services. Data consumption also trails global averages significantly, with sub-Saharan Africa recording roughly 6.7GB of monthly smartphone usage compared with a global average of 21.6GB.
However, analysts believe the market is approaching a tipping point. The International Finance Corporation estimates that doubling undersea cable capacity could reduce internet prices by 30 to 50 percent, potentially triggering a sharp increase in data consumption and accelerating demand for both edge and core data-centre infrastructure.
Hyperscalers reshape deployment models
Global technology companies are increasingly shifting toward in-country infrastructure deployments to reduce latency and improve user experience.
While Amazon Web Services pioneered dedicated African facilities in South Africa, other hyperscalers are now adopting hybrid deployment models combining local colocation partnerships with regional cloud hubs. Providers including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle are expanding through high-tier facilities in markets such as Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco.
Data centres emerge as backbone of digital economy
The report concludes that data centres are becoming central to Africa’s economic transformation, powering cloud services, AI innovation and digital public infrastructure.
Their location, ownership structures and integration with energy systems are increasingly shaping the continent’s competitiveness and digital sovereignty. Persistent electricity instability remains a major constraint, prompting operators to invest in renewable energy solutions and independent power arrangements, positioning data centres as catalysts for new energy investments.
Despite Africa hosting less than one percent of global capacity today, analysts argue the sector is entering a new phase marked by platform-based models, AI-ready facilities and diversified financing sources.
