Data centres, fibre, towers, cloud regions: we score every market on the five pillars that decide where digital infrastructure gets built, and where it works. Power, connectivity, economic strength, market demand, and investment climate.
| # | Market | Score ▼ | Grade | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | 79 | B | |
| 2 | Seychelles | 75 | B | |
| 3 | Mauritius | 72 | B | |
| 4 | Egypt | 71 | B | |
| 5 | Morocco | 70 | B | |
| 6 | Gabon | 68 | B | |
| 7 | Cabo Verde | 67 | B | |
| 8 | Kenya | 67 | B |
I spend my time analysing digital infrastructure across Africa. This index is one way I share what I learn.
Data-centre and digital-infrastructure coverage across African markets, sourced and dated, with the publisher behind every story.
South AfricaThe City of Cape Town has cleared two hyperscale campuses drawing roughly 174MW combined, among the largest new individual loads on the African grid. The approvals land against McKinsey projections that continental installed capacity grows from about 0.4GW today to 1.5–2.2GW by 2030, needing an estimated $10–20bn of investment.
South AfricaSouth Africa hosts about 70% of Africa’s data centres and has drawn commitments from Microsoft and Amazon, with the market expected to roughly double to $5bn by 2031. Reuters reports the build-out is colliding with the country’s electricity and water constraints, raising the question of whether new load competes with households already exposed to outages and drought.
GabonST Digital opened a sovereign Tier III facility in the Nkok Special Economic Zone near Libreville, with about 1MW of power, 92 racks and capacity for roughly 3,000 servers, on an investment of 8bn CFA francs. Around 95% of data generated in Gabon has been hosted abroad, and the ICT ministry signed an MoU giving startups discounted access.
Airtel is putting $120m into a 38MW facility at Eko Atlantic, designed for AI compute rather than general cloud storage, and targeted to be operational by the end of 2026. It would be the largest data centre in Nigeria and the first of five hyperscale sites the group has flagged for Africa.
EgyptThree ministries are jointly building an investment map of sites suitable for large-scale facilities, leaning on a renewable build-out targeted to reach 45% of the energy mix within two years. The strategy is explicitly about becoming a regional hub rather than only serving domestic demand.
EgyptThe National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority granted Hassan Allam Digital Infrastructure a licence to build and operate data centres and sell cloud services, with $400m committed to the first phase. It is the tenth such licence issued in two years, aimed at serving government and enterprise demand onshore.
Data-centre and digital-infrastructure news from all 54 African markets, rounded up market by market with what it means for the index.
