Africa’s live commercial data center capacity has approximately doubled over the past five years, reflecting growing demand for cloud services and local data processing. Despite this expansion, the continent continues to fall behind global peers in relative terms.

A decade ago, most African data centres functioned primarily as carrier hotels, offering limited compute capability. Today’s facilities are larger, more sophisticated and increasingly designed as interconnected cloud and compute platforms.

“This progress is real and should be acknowledged,” said Guy Zibi. “But it is not the destination. Africa is still scaling far more slowly than the rest of the world.”

While capacity has expanded rapidly in absolute terms, Africa’s share of global data center capacity remains flat or, in some cases, declining, as larger markets in Asia, the Middle East and North America continue to scale faster.

Compounding the challenge, the number of new greenfield data center developments has begun to slow, with much recent growth coming from expansions of existing sites rather than large new campuses. Analysts warn that without sustained greenfield investment, Africa risks hitting capacity constraints just as demand accelerates.