IN SHORT: Africa’s data centre construction market is forecast to reach $4.58 billion by 2031, growing at a compound annual rate of 24.26%, according to an Arizton report published May 13. Nigeria is the fastest-growing market, with investment projected to rise from $132 million in 2025 to $770 million by 2031. South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco remain the anchor markets. Google, Microsoft and AWS are all expanding their African infrastructure footprints. The continent’s AI infrastructure gap, with less than 1% of global AI computing capacity, is the primary driver of accelerated investment.
Africa’s data centre construction market is on a 24% annual growth trajectory that will take it from roughly $1.5 billion today to $4.58 billion by 2031, driven by hyperscaler expansion from Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, rapidly rising cloud adoption across the continent’s largest economies, and an AI infrastructure deficit so acute that African governments and investors are now treating data centre capacity as strategic national infrastructure rather than commercial real estate. The findings come from Arizton’s latest Africa Data Center Construction Market report, released May 13.
- Nigeria is the fastest-growing data centre market on the continent, with investment projected to grow from $132 million in 2025 to nearly $770 million by 2031, a sixfold increase in six years. The Nigerian market has historically been underbuilt relative to its 220 million population and the country’s growing digital financial services sector. MTN, Airtel, Flutterwave, Moniepoint and dozens of other digital businesses generate enormous data volumes that are currently processed in overseas facilities at significant latency and cost penalties.
- South Africa remains Africa’s most mature data centre market by capacity, with Johannesburg and Cape Town hosting the continent’s largest colocation facilities. The country has five AI-ready data centres, compared to Kenya’s two, and has attracted Microsoft, Amazon and other hyperscalers as anchor tenants in recent years. The South African market’s growth rate is lower than Nigeria’s because the base is already larger.
- Colocation facilities are the dominant market segment and will remain so, accounting for the majority of power capacity, investment and physical area over the forecast period. Hyperscale data centre development is expected to emerge gradually toward the later years of the 2026 to 2031 forecast, as cloud provider demand in Africa scales to the point where dedicated African hyperscale facilities become economically justified rather than relying on European or Middle Eastern regional nodes.
- Egypt, Morocco and Kenya are the other significant growth markets. Egypt’s combination of Mediterranean subsea cable landing stations, a large domestic population and Gulf capital investment has attracted significant data centre attention. Morocco’s position as a European nearshore market and AfDB-backed digital infrastructure investment give it a distinct competitive position. Kenya’s Nairobi, confirmed this week as Africa’s primary GITEX host city and the continent’s leading venture capital destination for tech investment, is the East African anchor for cloud and data infrastructure.
- Google completed the Africa Connect subsea cable system in 2024, connecting South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia and Ivory Coast to Europe with dedicated African capacity for the first time. Meta’s 2Africa cable system is similarly transformative for coastal connectivity. Both cable systems have materially improved the economics of building African-serving cloud infrastructure, making local data centre investment more attractive than it was when all traffic had to round-trip to European nodes.
- The AI infrastructure gap is the most acute investment driver. Africa accounts for less than 1% of global AI computing capacity, a structural deficit that governments including Kenya, Egypt and South Africa are now treating as both an economic development priority and a sovereignty issue. Africaspoint covered Kenya’s AI infrastructure campaign at Mobile World Congress: Kenya Has 2 AI-Ready Data Centres. South Africa Has 5.
The $4.58 billion by 2031 forecast needs to be read in context. Africa represents less than 3% of the global data centre construction market, which is projected to exceed $200 billion by the same year. The continent is growing faster than any other region on a percentage basis but from a very small base. The gap between what Africa needs to support its digital economy aspirations and what the current trajectory delivers is still enormous. The GITEX expansion to Nairobi, the Nairobi AI governor’s hyperscale data centre ambitions, and the AfDB’s digital infrastructure mandate are all pointed in the right direction. Closing the AI computing gap in a decade requires not just 24% annual growth but sustained acceleration beyond that rate.
The Bigger Picture: Africa’s data centre market is growing at 24% annually because the deficit is so large that even aggressive investment barely keeps pace with demand growth. Nigeria’s trajectory from $132 million to $770 million in six years is extraordinary, but $770 million for a country of 220 million people is still a fraction of what comparable economies have deployed. The continental question is not whether data centre investment will grow but whether it grows fast enough to prevent Africa from becoming a consumer of AI rather than a producer of it. At the current trajectory, with hyperscalers expanding and subsea cables now providing the connectivity backbone, the 2031 market looks achievable. Whether it is sufficient for Africa’s development ambitions is a different and harder question.
Source: Arizton via PR Newswire, May 13 2026
