Africa could require up to five gigawatts of additional power capacity for data centres over the next five years as demand for AI and cloud computing accelerates, highlighting weaknesses in the continent’s power delivery frameworks. 

This was disclosed by Guy Zibi, Managing Partner at Xalam Analytics and keynote presenter at the annual Africa Digital Infrastructure Outlook session hosted by Africa Hyperscalers.

At a macro level, data centers currently account for less than 0.5 per cent of Africa’s total electricity consumption, suggesting that power availability should not be a binding constraint. The continent also has substantial renewable and conventional energy resources.

In practice, however, unreliable grids and limited transmission capacity have forced many data center operators to develop parallel power solutions, including on-site generation and private power purchase agreements.

Guy Zibi noted that while Africa is not short of energy resources, unreliable power delivery remains a major constraint for data centres, which require predictable, high-quality electricity rather than theoretical capacity.

Under conservative assumptions, analysts estimate that at least 1GW of additional power will be required for data centres by the end of the decade. Under more aggressive AI adoption scenarios, that figure could rise to between 3GW and 5GW, putting pressure on regulators to adopt more flexible power and permitting regimes.