AI: Africa accounts for less than 1% of global data center capacity

Africa accounts for less than 1% of global data center capacity and controls about 0.5% of the cloud market, according to Forbes Afrique, at a time when artificial intelligence is becoming the primary driver of global demand for computing power.

"What problems do we want to solve first?"

On September 25, 2026, in Nairobi, on the sidelines of the United Nations High-Level Week, researcher Girmaw Abebe Tadesse advocated to UN News for the continent to design its own tools rather than importing systems conceived elsewhere. A member of the independent international scientific panel on AI supported by the UN, he leads Microsoft's "AI for Good" laboratory in Kenya. His starting question can be summed up in one sentence: "what problems do we want to solve first?" He cites the Digital Villages Initiative, which applies digital tools to agricultural development, and insists on the need for states, universities, technology companies, and creative communities to work together.

360 megawatts for a continent

The figures reveal the scale of the hardware lag. The active data center capacity in Africa is around 360 megawatts, with an additional 238 megawatts under construction, reports Forbes Afrique. A 10-megawatt center requires between 100 and 120 million dollars in investment. Projects are nevertheless multiplying: ST Digital inaugurated a site in Nkok, Gabon, in July 2026, and a Tier 3 center in Côte d'Ivoire in October 2025; Morocco is spearheading a 500-megawatt hyperscale project in Dakhla; Algeria has built a national center with Huawei; and Senegal has deployed a national cloud with Alibaba Cloud for the 2026 Youth Olympic Games.

Electricity, the primary bottleneck

"The number one major obstacle is securing energy," summarizes specialist Stéphane Duproz, as quoted by Forbes Afrique. Next come regulatory visibility, sustainable client commitments, and training: local skills constitute a serious hurdle, Yann-Gabriel N'Zi points out in the same article. In other words, digital sovereignty cannot be decreed; it must be financed and electrified.

Announcements to be verified

The Cameroonian case illustrates the gap between communication and commitment. During the first Cameroon-United States economic and trade dialogue on August 27, 2026, the American company Cybastion announced 75 million dollars, or approximately 42 billion CFA francs, for a so-called "sovereign" data center in Douala, backed by its own power generation. Neither the computing power, the energy technology, the exact site, the timeline, nor the financial structure have been made public, note Africtelegraph and Notre Afrik, who refer to it as an investment intention rather than secured funding. Yet, the health, banking, and administrative data of Africans are hosted somewhere: as long as that "somewhere" remains off the continent, the question of who accesses it will remain.