African governments will need to act as anchor customers for digital infrastructure if the continent is to close its data localization gap and accelerate the development of domestic cloud and data center ecosystems, speakers said during a panel on The Data Center Imperative: Closing the Repatriation Gap at GITEX Africa in Marrakech.
Across the discussion, policymakers and infrastructure operators argued that public-sector adoption of digital platforms is no longer simply a governance modernization exercise – it is a market-making intervention capable of unlocking investment into national compute infrastructure.
Annick Sakho, Government Affairs Director for Africa at Oracle, said governments play a decisive role in shaping the trajectory of digital infrastructure markets by adopting cloud-based services early and at scale.
“Governments should go first in adoption, because they set the trend,” she said, pointing to Kenya’s expansion of e-government platforms as an example of how public-sector demand can anchor local infrastructure ecosystems and encourage private-sector participation.
As African countries implement digital public services ranging from identity platforms to tax systems and health infrastructure, these workloads increasingly determine whether data remains within national borders or continues to be hosted offshore. Without sustained domestic demand from government institutions, speakers noted, hyperscalers and infrastructure investors face limited incentives to deploy local cloud regions.
Roque Lozano Barbero, Senior Vice President for Network Infrastructure for the Middle East and Africa at Nokia, argued that data center expansion should be treated as a national digital mandate rather than a standalone infrastructure decision. Countries, he said, must design architectures aligned with their grid realities, connectivity assets, and demand trajectories while building use cases that justify local compute investment. Rather than asking whether Africa is ready for hyperscalers, he suggested the more relevant question is whether hyperscalers are ready for Africa’s improving fiber networks and expanding enterprise demand. Governments play a central role in shaping this environment by anchoring demand through digital public services and coordinating investment conditions across the ecosystem.
Energy availability remains one of the most decisive constraints shaping infrastructure deployment timelines globally. Ibrahim Dikko, Chief Executive Officer of Backbone Connectivity, noted that while many components of digital infrastructure can be commoditized, reliable power cannot. In several advanced markets there is now a five-to-ten-year lag between data center demand and grid readiness, he said, suggesting that African countries that solve power constraints early could move ahead of global peers in attracting infrastructure investment.
Operators and infrastructure developers also stressed the importance of sustained collaboration between governments, connectivity providers, and hyperscale cloud platforms. Amine Kandil, Chief Executive Officer of N+ONE Datacenters, pointed to Morocco’s emergence as the second Oracle cloud region location outside South Africa as evidence that coordinated engagement between regulators and infrastructure operators can produce tangible outcomes. The deployment followed two years of sustained collaboration, including one year of construction and another year of contractual alignment with hyperscale partners.
The panel also highlighted the growing importance of renewable energy integration in supporting new data center deployments. Sakho emphasized that development finance institutions are likely to play a central role in supporting blended financing structures capable of scaling cloud infrastructure across African markets over the next five years.
Beyond infrastructure readiness, speakers emphasized that data localization ultimately depends on the presence of domestic digital platforms capable of generating sustained compute demand. Nouhade Mechkou, ICT Director at Orange Maroc, said telecom operators are increasingly investing in renewable backup energy systems and edge computing infrastructure alongside 5G rollouts to strengthen resilience and reduce operational costs across national networks. Keeping data within African markets, she noted, requires coordinated action across regulators, operators, hyperscalers, and application developers.
“Data will stay where there is economic interest,” she said, emphasizing the importance of building local platforms and services that generate demand for domestic hosting capacity.
As African governments expand digital public infrastructure and implement frameworks such as the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, speakers agreed that early public-sector adoption of cloud services may prove decisive in determining whether the continent’s digital economy develops on locally hosted infrastructure or remains dependent on offshore compute ecosystems.
