FAQ
Kenya's data centres, answered.
The questions journalists, investors and policymakers ask most: answered from DC254's verified directory, with the sources one click away.
01How many data centres does Kenya have?
DC254 currently tracks 31 records: 27 data centre facilities across Kenya plus 4 East African reference facilities. Of the Kenyan facilities, 20 are operational; the rest are under construction or announced, including some of the largest projects in the region. The count covers commercial colocation campuses, telecom-owned facilities and government installations in Nairobi, Mombasa and secondary cities. browse the full directory.
02What is the largest data centre in Kenya or East Africa?
By live capacity, iXAfrica NBOX1 in Nairobi leads the market with 4.5 MW of live IT load, East Africa's first hyperscale, AI-ready facility. The biggest number on the horizon is the Microsoft–G42 AI data centre project, a $1 billion commitment with around 100 MW of planned capacity announced for Nairobi. Scale claims change quickly in this market, so every figure on DC254 carries its source and verification date. see the facility record · read the AI cluster analysis.
03How much new data centre capacity is coming to Kenya?
Projects that are announced or under construction (outside today's operational fleet) represent roughly 230 MW of planned capacity. That includes iXAfrica's NBOX2 expansion, the Microsoft–G42 campus and other operator build-outs. Pipeline figures are developer-announced, not independently measured, which is exactly why DC254 separates live IT load from planned capacity throughout the directory. how we count capacity.
04How many submarine cables connect Kenya to the global internet?
Seven international submarine cable systems are live in Kenya (SEACOM, TEAMS, EASSy, LION2, DARE1, PEACE and 2Africa), landing on the Kenyan coast at Mombasa and Mtwapa. Africa-1 landed at Mombasa in 2024 and awaits full service, and Meta's Daraja is in development. This concentration is both Kenya's strength and its single point of failure: nearly all of the country's international bandwidth rides cables that meet at the same shoreline. the infrastructure map.
05What powers Kenya's data centres, and are they green?
Kenya's electricity grid is one of the greenest on Earth: roughly 90% of generation comes from renewables, anchored by geothermal baseload from the Rift Valley plus hydro and wind. For data centres, that means a genuinely low-carbon power supply without relying on renewable-energy certificates, a structural advantage almost no other emerging market can match. This is quietly becoming Kenya's strongest pitch for AI and cloud investment. the energy cluster · Kenya's green data centre edge.
06Which Kenyan data centres are AI-ready?
5 of the 27 Kenyan facilities in the directory are flagged AI-ready on DC254, meaning they offer high-density racks, liquid-cooling readiness or GPU-capable power envelopes. AI workloads demand far more power per rack than conventional cloud hosting, and not every existing facility can retrofit to meet them. Each facility page lists what the operator has publicly committed to. filter AI-ready facilities.
07Who operates Kenya's data centres?
The market runs on 18 tracked operators, spanning regional specialists (iXAfrica, Wingu Africa, Raxio), pan-African platforms (Africa Data Centres, Liquid Intelligent Technologies), national telecoms (Safaricom, Telkom Kenya) and government-backed players (Kenya Data Centres under the ICT Authority). It is a competitive, carrier-neutral market by regional standards, no single operator controls the majority of live capacity. see all operators.
08Do you need a licence to run a data centre in Kenya?
Kenya's data centre market is liberalised, and the regulatory picture has been moving quickly, from licensing frameworks under the Communications Authority to county-level approvals and the national digital economy agenda. DC254 maintains a dedicated explainer on the licensing and regulatory framework as it stands, and tracks material changes as they happen. the licensing framework explainer.
09How does DC254 verify its numbers?
Every facility in the directory carries a named data source, a confidence rating and a last-verified date, currently September 2026 across the board. We separate verified, in-service IT load from developer-announced pipeline figures, and we publish the method so you can check our work. When a claim cannot be verified, the directory says so instead of rounding up. read the DC254 methodology.
10Can I download or reuse DC254's data?
Yes, the full directory is free to download and cite, with no signup wall. Grab the CSV dataset or query the JSON API directly; both carry the same source and verification fields you see on the site. Attribution to Data Centre 254 is appreciated and helps the project keep the data current. download the CSV · query the JSON API.
Something we got wrong or left out? Tell us, corrections are welcome and published.