Kenya's data centre market generates more confident numbers per shilling of revenue than almost any industry in the country. Market size figures vary by a factor of twenty depending on who is counting. Facility counts vary by a factor of three. Capacity figures get quoted in MW without anyone saying whether they mean IT load, building capacity or a master plan. This page is our reference layer: the numbers we can stand behind, what each one actually measures, and where it came from. For the full reasoning on why the headline market-size figures disagree with each other, read our companion piece on the estimates.
The facility count: 27 verified entries
Start with the number everyone argues about. The PeeringDB facility register (the industry's community-maintained, cross-operator database) lists 14 facility records for Kenya as of 8 September 2026, including cable landing stations and one apparent duplicate registration. Our DC Directory tracks 27 verified entries: the register's genuine facilities, plus operator-owned sites (Safaricom Waiyaki Way, Safaricom Red Hill), government facilities (Konza National Data Centre) and announced projects, each labelled by status so operating capacity is never conflated with pipeline.
Three facilities dominate the carrier-neutral layer. iColo (a Digital Realty company) runs the largest footprint with four facilities, two in Karen, Nairobi, and two in Mombasa. Africa Data Centres' NBO1 at Sameer Business Park is the most interconnected building in the country, with 122 networks and four internet exchanges registered on-site. iXAfrica's NBOX1 on Mombasa Road is the newest large entrant and the only facility describing itself as hyperscale and AI-ready. PAIX, inside Britam Tower in Upper Hill, rounds out the carrier-neutral four, the smallest by interconnection but the most central.
The count matters less than what it excludes. Several well-known round-ups list facilities that fail basic verification, we removed one such entry from our own directory in September 2026 after checking the operator's own website. That is exactly why every entry in our directory carries named sources, a last-verified date and a PeeringDB cross-reference; our data methodology documents the counting rules in full.
Capacity: what is actually operating
Verified, published operating capacity in Kenya is modest. Summing the facility-level figures operators actually publish (many do not publish any), total facility capacity across operational carrier-neutral and operator sites comes to roughly 28 MW, with individual buildings ranging from 0.9 MW at iColo Mombasa One to 7.5 MW of available site capacity at ADC Nairobi 1. The EU Digital Investment Facility's Xalam-authored Kenya briefing put live IT load at approximately 13 MW, with around 30 MW under construction, as of its most recent edition. Live IT load is always lower than total building capacity, the difference is commissioning, halls not yet fitted out, and headroom.
The pipeline is where the numbers get noisy. iXAfrica has announced an 18 MW second building (3,744 racks) to take its campus to a planned 22.5 MW. Africa Data Centres broke ground in January 2023 on a Sameer expansion described as starting at 5 MW and scaling to an additional 15 MW, with no completion confirmation published since. The Microsoft–G42 joint venture, announced at US$1 billion and a 100 MW class, remains stalled on grid power delivery at single-site scale. Every one of these is a plan, not a megawatt, and our directory marks them accordingly.
The money: market size, honestly scoped
The most-cited market size figures for Kenya (every one fetched and dated on 8 September 2026) are:
- ~US$25–30 million a year, Xalam Analytics' estimate of annual commercial colocation revenue (the money operators actually earn from selling space and power), published openly in the EU DIF Kenya briefing. This is the only methodology-visible public figure, and it reconciles with verified megawatts at regional pricing.
- US$266 million (2025) → US$805 million (2031), Arizton's syndicated estimate, a total market scope covering the value chain well beyond colocation.
- US$266.0 million (2025) → US$805.0 million (2031), Ken Research's July 2026 report. Compare the decimals: identical to Arizton, to the point, at the same CAGR. Whether by licence, shared upstream data, or circular citation, that is one data point wearing two logos, not independent confirmation.
- US$369 million (2025), 6Wresearch (July 2026), total-market scope, 11.3% CAGR.
- US$509 million (2024), Credence Research, undated on its public page.
- US$606 million (2025) → US$1,240 million (2035), DCMarketInsights, undated.
- 15 MW → 25 MW (capacity, not dollars), Mordor Intelligence (Dec 2025), honest about measuring capacity.
A 20x spread is not a rounding disagreement, it is a scope disagreement plus a citation chain, and we explain the mechanics in detail. The practical takeaway: if someone quotes you a Kenya market size, the first question is whether it measures operator revenue or the whole construction-plus-services value chain, and the second is whether the source shows its method.
What the reputable sources do agree on is direction. Xalam projects roughly 30% compound annual growth for Kenyan colocation through 2030. Ken Research's July 2026 report projects the total market more than tripling between 2025 and 2031, with commissioned IT load growing from 20 MW (2025) to a projected 90 MW (2031). Occupancy across operating facilities runs at around 60%, healthy, with room to absorb new supply.
Connectivity: the numbers that actually differentiate buildings
In a market where most facilities claim "Tier III" without third-party certification, interconnection is the honest differentiator. The PeeringDB register shows a steep hierarchy: ADC Nairobi 1 leads with 122 networks and four exchanges (KIXP Nairobi, LINX Nairobi, BGP.Exchange and PLUGINS IX all on site); iColo Mombasa One is the densest building on the coast with 94 networks, a function of its proximity to the submarine cable landing stations; iColo Nairobi One carries 62 networks and four exchanges; iXAfrica NBOX1 has 44; PAIX has 37. At the other end, several registered facilities carry fewer than five networks, real buildings, but not yet interconnection destinations.
Kenya's submarine position underwrites all of it: seven live cable systems land on the Kenyan coast (SEACOM and TEAMS from 2009, EASSy, LION2, DARE1, PEACE and 2Africa, the largest cable system ever built), with Africa-1 landed and awaiting service, and the Meta-backed Daraja cable, hosted by Safaricom, in development. On our infrastructure map you can see each facility, its registered networks and the cable routes together.
Power: Kenya's unfair advantage and its hard ceiling
About 93% of Kenya's electricity generation in 2024 came from renewables (geothermal, hydro and wind) giving workloads hosted in Nairobi one of the cleanest grid mixes of any data centre market anywhere. The grid had roughly 3,192 MW of connected capacity against a peak demand around 2,316 MW as of late 2024 and early 2025: comfortable in aggregate, tight in specific places. That tightness is the practical constraint behind the stalled Microsoft–G42 project, delivering 100+ MW to a single site is a different engineering and commercial problem from serving a city.
PUE (power usage effectiveness) is improving as new stock comes online: Ken Research's report puts Kenya's weighted average at around 1.52 historically, moving toward 1.32 in newer builds. iXAfrica claims a campus PUE of 1.25 using free-air cooling, plausible at Nairobi's altitude and temperate climate, and an operator design claim rather than a certified figure.
How to use these numbers
Three rules. First, match the metric to the question: operator revenue for commercial attractiveness, IT load for capacity planning, network counts for interconnection decisions. Second, check the date, figures older than a year in a market growing 30% annually are decoration. Third, check the label: "announced", "under construction" and "operational" are different universes, and any source that blurs them is inflating something. Every figure on this page carries its source and verification date; the directory applies the same discipline to all 27 entries, and we correct in the open when the market moves.