Africa’s Data Centre Capacity Lags Global Growth Despite Surge in Investment
The report highlights a significant capacity gap despite what it describes as a “digital gold rush” in investment activity.
Africa’s data centre sector is attracting unprecedented levels of attention and capital, yet the continent remains structurally behind the global curve in terms of actual installed and utilised capacity. According to Data Centres in Africa 2026 – The Economic Report , Africa currently accounts for less than 1% of global data centre capacity, despite hosting nearly a fifth of the world’s population and some of the fastest-growing digital markets.
Over the past five years, investment pipelines have expanded rapidly. Hyperscalers, private equity firms, telecom groups and development finance institutions have committed billions of dollars to new facilities across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and a handful of emerging hubs. The report notes that Africa’s total IT load capacity is projected to triple by 2030, reaching around 1.2 GW. On paper, this suggests strong momentum.
However, this growth is not sufficient to close the gap with the rest of the world. While Africa’s capacity is expected to triple, global data centre capacity is forecast to quadruple over the same period, driven largely by massive AI-focused campuses in the United States, Europe and Asia. As a result, Africa’s relative share of global capacity is likely to remain broadly flat rather than converge with global averages.
A key challenge highlighted in the report is the capacity–utilisation mismatch. Outside South Africa, only about one-third of built data centre capacity is currently live or fully fitted out, and even in the continent’s most mature market, utilisation is estimated at around 74%. Much of the new infrastructure has been built “ahead of demand”, reflecting long investment horizons of 10–20 years, but also exposing operators to extended ramp-up periods and slower returns.
Structural constraints continue to hold demand back. High data costs relative to income, limited enterprise cloud migration, power reliability issues and skills shortages all suppress local usage. The report also points out that a large share of African data is still hosted offshore, mainly in Europe and North America, reinforcing latency challenges and limiting the immediate load on local facilities.
At the same time, emerging drivers such as data localisation policies and AI workloads are beginning to change the equation. AI applications are highly sensitive to latency and power availability, making offshore processing increasingly inefficient. This is expected to push more demand into existing but underutilised African facilities over the medium term. Until then, the continent remains in a paradoxical position: heavy investment, rising capacity, but a persistent global deficit.
In short, Africa’s data centre sector is growing fast, but not fast enough to catch up. Without accelerated demand, lower connectivity costs, stronger energy infrastructure and deeper enterprise adoption, the continent risks staying on the back foot of the global digital infrastructure race — even as billions continue to flow into new builds.
