Africa may account for less than 1% of global data-centre capacity today, but the rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence is turning the continent into a new arena for US-China technology competition — with Gulf investors and African operators increasingly shaping the outcome.
The global race for artificial intelligence is creating an enormous appetite for computing infrastructure, and Africa is beginning to feel the effects.
The continent currently accounts for only around 0.6% of global data-centre capacity, despite representing close to a fifth of the world’s population. According to the Africa Data Centres Association, approximately 360 MW of capacity is operational, with another 238 MW under construction and 656 MW in the development pipeline. (africadca.org)
That relatively small starting point is precisely what makes Africa strategically interesting.
McKinsey estimates African data-centre demand could increase from roughly 0.4 GW today to between 1.5 GW and 2.2 GW by 2030. Meeting that demand could require between $10 billion and $20 billion in new investment in data-centre shells alone and create a $20 billion to $30 billion revenue pool across the wider value chain. (mckinsey.com)
Behind those numbers, however, a larger geopolitical competition is emerging.
America leads the cloud race
For now, the United States holds the stronger position at the highest-value end of Africa’s digital infrastructure market.
American technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google have established cloud infrastructure and services across the continent, with South Africa emerging as Africa’s principal hyperscale market.
The American advantage extends beyond physical data centres. US companies dominate much of the global ecosystem surrounding cloud computing, enterprise software and advanced artificial intelligence.
That gives Washington an important strategic advantage as African companies increasingly migrate workloads to the cloud and governments consider where sensitive national data and future AI applications should be hosted.
Kenya illustrates both the scale of this ambition and the difficulties involved.
Microsoft and UAE-based AI company G42 announced a $1 billion digital investment initiative in 2024 centred around a geothermal-powered data-centre campus at Olkaria. The project was designed to support a new East African cloud region and potentially establish Kenya as one of the continent’s most important computing hubs.
However, the project encountered delays in 2026 amid disagreements over power requirements and payment guarantees. Kenyan officials have maintained that the project has not been abandoned and remains under discussion. (reuters.com)
The episode provides an important lesson for Africa’s emerging data-centre market: attracting technology companies is only part of the equation. Countries also need enormous quantities of dependable electricity.
China already controls part of the infrastructure beneath the cloud
China’s position is different.
Rather than dominating Africa’s hyperscale public-cloud market, Chinese companies have spent years building significant portions of the telecommunications and digital infrastructure upon which the continent’s digital economy operates.
Huawei is particularly important.
The company has supplied telecommunications equipment, data-centre technology and digital infrastructure across numerous African markets. In April 2026, Huawei released a dedicated Northern Africa AI Data Centre reference design covering computing, networking, storage, cooling and power infrastructure.
Huawei says it has delivered more than 1,000 data centres globally and has implemented multiple projects across Africa. (e.huawei.com)
This creates an important distinction in the US-China competition.
American companies are particularly powerful at the cloud, software and AI platform layer.
Chinese companies are deeply competitive at the equipment, telecommunications and physical infrastructure layer.
One recent dataset examining sub-Saharan African facilities found no Chinese ultimate owner among the facilities in its register, but identified Huawei or ZTE equipment, construction or financing in 170 facilities, equivalent to 56% of the dataset. (data-landscapers.io)
China’s influence therefore cannot be measured simply by counting Chinese-owned data centres.
Africa’s real bottleneck is becoming electricity
The next stage of the competition may be determined less by technology than by energy.
Artificial-intelligence workloads require considerably denser computing infrastructure than traditional enterprise hosting. As capacity increases, reliable and competitively priced electricity becomes one of the industry’s most important location criteria.
The Africa Data Centres Association says power availability has already overtaken connectivity as the principal constraint on African data-centre development. (africadca.org)
This could change the investment map.
South Africa is likely to remain the continent’s largest data-centre market because of its sophisticated corporate economy, financial sector, connectivity and existing cloud ecosystem.
But a second group of markets is emerging around Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco, while countries with abundant renewable or lower-cost energy could increasingly compete for future AI infrastructure. McKinsey identifies South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria as Africa’s five leading markets today. (mckinsey.com)
Geothermal resources strengthen Kenya’s proposition. Hydropower could create opportunities elsewhere in East and Southern Africa, while natural gas and expanding renewable generation could support new capacity in markets currently considered secondary.
For countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mozambique, the opportunity is therefore not necessarily to compete immediately with Johannesburg or Cairo.
It is to combine energy availability, fibre connectivity, data regulation and investment incentives strongly enough to become the next generation of regional computing hubs.
A third player is entering the race
The emerging African data-centre contest is also becoming more complicated than a simple US-China rivalry.
Gulf capital is moving quickly into the sector.
This month, MTN announced a strategic partnership with a UAE-backed data-centre investor to develop AI-ready infrastructure across Africa. The initial programme is expected to target around 150 MW across South Africa and Nigeria, with MTN holding a minority position while its partner provides much of the capital and technical expertise. (mtn.com)
This model could become increasingly important.
African telecommunications groups provide customers, fibre networks, land, market knowledge and existing infrastructure. Gulf investors provide capital and increasingly sophisticated data-centre expertise. American companies provide cloud and AI platforms.
The result is an emerging alliance that does not fit neatly into the traditional US-versus-China narrative.
The race to 2030
The United States currently appears to hold the advantage in Africa’s highest-value cloud and AI ecosystem, while China maintains considerable influence deeper within telecommunications, hardware and physical digital infrastructure.
But Africa’s data-centre market remains sufficiently small that today’s leadership should not be mistaken for the final outcome.
Demand could multiply several times before the end of the decade.
As it does, the strategic question will shift from who owns individual data centres to who controls the wider infrastructure surrounding them: electricity, fibre, chips, servers, cloud platforms and ultimately the data itself.
That could make data centres one of Africa’s most consequential infrastructure investment themes of the late 2020s.
And unlike earlier phases of the continent’s digital development, African companies may capture a larger share of the assets themselves.
The emerging model could therefore look less like America versus China in Africa, and more like American technology, Chinese infrastructure expertise, Gulf capital and African operators competing — and increasingly collaborating — to build the continent’s computing backbone.
For African governments, that competition presents an opportunity.
The countries able to turn abundant energy, connectivity and sensible regulation into bankable digital infrastructure could attract billions of dollars of investment while positioning themselves at the centre of the next generation of the global digital economy.
