A new forecast, and a familiar disagreement
The market research firm Arizton published its Kenya data centre market edition in March 2026, and the headline is bold. The market was valued at USD 266 million in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 805 million by 2031, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 20.27%.
Numbers like that travel fast in investment decks, and they deserve scrutiny before they harden into "fact". We read the report's public summary, cross-checked every major claim against our own directory and coverage, and found a picture that is directionally right but definition-sensitive. Here is what the forecast says, what it gets right, and where it needs a health warning.
What sits inside the USD 805 million
Arizton's market sizing covers colocation revenue, facility area in square feet and IT load capacity in megawatts, segmented across IT infrastructure, electrical and mechanical systems, and general construction. Most of Kenya's colocation capacity is being built to Tier III standards, the level that supports concurrent maintainability.
That segmentation matters when you compare forecasts. Our earlier market outlook for 2025-2030 placed the 2025 market at USD 180-220 million, heading to USD 400-500 million by 2030, and Arizton's numbers sit well above both ends. The difference is not sloppiness on either side; it is what gets counted, and forecasts that blend colocation revenue with the value of services consumed inside data centres will always look bigger.
Seven cables now, two more coming
Connectivity is the quiet foundation of every Kenyan data centre forecast, and Arizton's cable list checks out against our own coverage. The report names seven operational systems: 2Africa, DARE 1, EASSy, LION2, PEACE Cable, SEACOM/Tata TGN-Eurasia and TEAMS.
Two more are funded and under way. Africa-1 and Daraja are expected to become operational by 2026-2027, each adding landing capacity on the coast. The pattern matters more than the count: every new cable lowers the marginal cost of international bandwidth and widens the redundancy that hyperscale tenants demand before they commit to a region.
The 13-facility question
Arizton counts 13 operational colocation data centres in Kenya, with Nairobi hosting 8 of them and 7 more upcoming in the city as of September 2025. The DC254 directory, which tracks the region the way operators actually describe themselves, currently lists 23 Kenyan facilities across 14 operators.
Neither number is wrong. Arizton's lens is third-party colocation only, which excludes enterprise and in-house facilities and anything outside its September 2025 snapshot window. This is the same methodological gap we documented when explaining why Kenya's market estimates disagree, and it is the first question to ask of any headline figure: what universe was counted?
Where the money is actually going
The vendor landscape in the report reads like our directory's bookmarks bar. Incumbent investors named are Africa Data Centres, iColo (Digital Realty), iXAfrica Data Centres, Safaricom and Telkom Kenya, with Nxtra by Airtel, Cloudoon and G42 flagged as new entrants.
The new money is concrete. In September 2025, Airtel's Nxtra started construction on its Nairobi facility, a two-phase build expected to absorb about KSh 19 billion (roughly USD 147 million) with operations targeted for the first quarter of 2027. In the same month, iXAfrica secured financing from Rand Merchant Bank to expand its NBOX1 campus, which had earlier been backed by a USD 50 million Helios investment.
The snapshot problem: G42
Here is where the forecast needs its health warning. Arizton still lists G42 as a Kenyan new entrant, citing the March 2024 memorandum of understanding with EcoCloud for a green campus that would start at 100 MW of IT capacity and scale toward 1 GW.
That was true when the snapshot closed in September 2025. Our own reporting records what happened next: the Microsoft and G42 campus was suspended in May 2026 after the Treasury concept note was never approved. A forecast is only as current as its cutoff, and this entry is now a reminder to date-check every "upcoming" list before it reaches an investment memo.
Power is the enabler, and Kenya keeps stacking it
The report's energy signals align with what we track on this site. In July 2025, KenGen installed a battery energy storage system to power its modular data centre in Nairobi, designed to keep supply stable through periods of low grid demand. The government continues to pilot arrangements that would let data centres purchase renewable energy directly from generators.
Kenya's grid already draws more than 90% of its electricity from renewables, anchored by the Olkaria geothermal field. For a market promising a 20% compound growth rate, the binding constraint will not be demand or connectivity; it will be whether power purchase structures and grid build-out keep pace with the rack load being sold.
How to read this forecast responsibly
The honest summary is that Kenya's data centre market is growing fast, that USD 805 million by 2031 is plausible if definitions hold and nothing structural breaks, and that the same sentence carries three conditions. Watch the delivery dates rather than the projections: whether Nxtra hits its Q1 2027 target, whether Africa-1 and Daraja land on schedule, and whether the Communications Authority's proposed standalone data centre licence clarifies or complicates the regulatory ground.
For investors, the report's own scope note is the best guidance: 13 existing facilities, 9 upcoming, 4-plus locations. That is the counted universe behind the USD 805 million. For everyone else, our directory and tracker stay live, and the gap between any forecast and the ground truth is exactly what we exist to measure.