Kenya’s power grid limits tech
An ambitious data center project has stalled due to insufficient electrical capacity.
Kenya is positioning itself as Africa’s silicon savanna and leading technology hub. Promoting itself as a “full-package investment destination”, part of the strategy is encouraging global tech giants to set up operations in the country.
However, recently, the plan has run into a hurdle: electrical capacity.
Flash back to May 2024, when Microsoft Corp. had unveiled plans to invest $1 billion in a data center powered by geothermal energy in Kenya, in partnership with Emirates-based AI developer G42.
Described as the largest and most comprehensive digital investment in the country’s history, the center will be the heartbeat of a digital-led economy in Kenya and the wider East Africa region, based on AI and cloud-computing services.
Two years later, the project has been abandoned due to too little electricity to power the centre.
According to the G42, the facility was to be located about 100 kilometers north-west of Nairobi, the center of geothermal energy production. Initially, it will require 100 MW of power to run, but when fully operational it will require 1 GW of power.
electrical interruption
For a country whose installed power capacity is only 3,840 megawatts (3.8 GW), and where national connectivity is about 76%, this realization was surprising.
“To get that one data center up and running, we have to shut down power to half the country,” President William Ruto said at a recent state event. “That’s when I knew there was a problem.” He acknowledged that Kenya continues to lose high-value investments due to low power capacity; It needs at least 10 GW to attract and secure investment.
This leaves no ongoing power generation projects or any planned in the future in Kenya.
Data center outage is bad news for Microsoft. The tech giant sees East Africa as a mature market for its Azure products and other cloud and AI-powered solutions for businesses and the public sector. The main focus was to help governments digitalize operations and service delivery, starting with Kenya, which has signaled plans to move more of its services to the cloud. Another goal was to help startups, entrepreneurs and organizations create a digital ecosystem offering critical solutions to key sectors of the economy.
