Trust

Methodology

DC254's entire value is that you can trust the numbers. This page explains exactly how the data behind the DC Directory and our statistics is sourced, verified, dated, and corrected, and what to do when you think we got something wrong.

For how articles are written, labelled, and kept editorially independent, see the Editorial Policy. This page is about the data.

How a data point gets verified

Every facility entry in the directory passes through the same four-step chain before it is published:

1. The claim

Every figure in the DC Directory starts as a specific claim: a capacity in megawatts, a rack count, a tier rating, a launch date. Vague claims are not recorded, if a source will not say what it means, neither do we.

2. The source

Each claim is attached to its origin: operator websites and annual reports, regulator filings and gazette notices, funding announcements, and reporting from established trade press (DataCenterDynamics, TechCabal, Business Daily, ITWeb Africa). The source is printed on every directory entry.

3. The date verified

Every directory entry carries the month it was last checked, not the month it was written. When a facility expands, changes status, or is challenged by new reporting, the date moves. Stale data is treated as a bug.

4. Independent evidence

Where possible, a claim is cross-checked against a second, independent source, a regulator record behind a company press release, trade press behind an operator announcement. Where we could only find one source, the entry says so through its confidence level.

Data confidence levels

Every directory entry carries one of three confidence badges, so you can see how strong the evidence behind it is:

High

Confirmed by the operator and at least one independent source (regulator filing, trade press, or official document). Example: iXAfrica NBOX1's capacity, reported by the operator and covered by DataCenterDynamics.

Medium

Reported by a credible single source (usually the operator itself) with no independent confirmation yet. Most facility specs sit here, because operators rarely publish third-party-audited figures.

Low

Based on limited public information: a listing, a brief mention, or an out-of-date company page. The entry is published because it is part of Kenya's infrastructure map, but treat the numbers as indicative.

Claim-level verification (v0.2 pilot)

A facility is not one fact, it is many. Since September 2026 we have been moving the directory from facility-wide confidence badges to claim-level evidence: each facility record is broken into separate claims (identity, operator, facility type, location, status, capacity, connectivity), and every claim carries its own tiered sources with verbatim excerpts, retrieval dates and a verification state.

Source tiers

  • Tier 1, Primary: the operator, a government agency, a regulator, official filings and press releases.
  • Tier 2, Independent authoritative: government reports, regulators, research institutions, established industry registries such as PeeringDB.
  • Tier 3, Reputable secondary: established technology and business press.
  • Tier 4, Discovery only: aggregators, directories and snippets. They can help us find a source; they never establish a claim.

The four public states

  • Verified: enough strong evidence supports the claim, at least one primary or authoritative source plus one independent corroborating source.
  • Review: evidence exists but does not yet meet the threshold (for example, a single organisation).
  • Unsupported: the current evidence does not adequately support the claim.
  • Unverified: the claim has not yet been through the pipeline.

One rule sits above the machinery: the AI research assistant collects and scores evidence, but it never establishes facts. Every verification decision is approved by the DataCentre254 editor, and every status change is recorded in an append-only evidence ledger, so the history of a record can be audited, not just its current state. The v0.2 pilot covers eleven facilities; the panel on those facility pages exposes the claim list, the source trail and each approved state.

Counting rules

Before any source is checked, the question has to be sharp. These are the rules that decide what appears in the directory:

What we count as a facility

A physical building in Kenya where IT equipment can be housed under a service agreement, carrier-neutral colocation, operator-owned sites that sell colocation, government facilities that accept outside workloads, and cable landing stations (labelled as such).

What we exclude

Pure enterprise server rooms with no outside colocation offer, and duplicate register entries. Example: the PeeringDB register carries an entry simply named "Icolo" registered by a third party at LRC Road, we treat it as a duplicate registration, not a distinct facility, and do not count it.

One building, one entry

Where a facility has been rebranded we keep one entry and say so. Example: "East Africa Data Centre" and "Africa Data Centres Nairobi" are the same Sameer Business Park building, it opened as EADC and was rebranded when Liquid Telecom consolidated its data centre arm under Cassava Technologies.

Announced is not operating

Committed, early-stage and under-construction projects are labelled as such and never counted as operating capacity. Where a press-release figure (e.g. a groundbreaking MW target) is shown, the entry states plainly that it is a plan, not an as-built figure.

How we count subsea cables

A cable counts as live only when ready-for-service is confirmed, not when it lands or is announced. Nine systems are landed or named at the Kenyan coast: seven are live (SEACOM, TEAMS, EASSy, LION2, DARE1, PEACE and 2Africa), Africa-1 has landed but ready-for-service is not yet announced, and Daraja is in development. The homepage “Subsea cables live” figure reads from this same verified dataset.

Update cadence

Kenya's infrastructure changes fast, capacity expands, licences are issued, cables land. Freshness is part of accuracy, so each part of the site runs on an explicit schedule:

DC Directory: monthly sweep, quarterly re-verification

The directory is swept monthly for status changes (new launches, expansions, outages reported in press). Every entry is fully re-verified against its sources each quarter. The current dataset was last verified in September 2026.

News & market moves: as they happen

Material announcements (a new subsea cable, an acquisition, a licence award) are covered when they happen and dated. If a story develops, the article's updated_date moves with it.

Explainers & reference articles: reviewed on change

Evergreen explainers are reviewed when the underlying facts change (a new licence framework, a new cable landing) and the updated date at the top of each article reflects the last material review.

The PeeringDB cross-check

Every facility entry that exists on the PeeringDB facility register for Kenya carries a cross-reference with the number of networks and internet exchanges registered at that building, plus the date we fetched it. The network count is the single best public proxy for how well-connected a building actually is, marketing pages rarely say.

Two caveats we state openly. First, PeeringDB coverage is evidence of interconnection, not of existence: genuinely operator-owned facilities (Safaricom Waiyaki Way, for example) may be absent from the register while being entirely real. Second, the register is community-maintained, a sparse record (iColo NBO2's two networks against a 6.5 MW design load) is a signal that a building is ramping, not proof that it does not exist. We treat the register as a cross-check, never as ground truth.

The PIDA layer, registry, not facilities

Separately from the facility directory, our map carries a layer drawn from the African Infrastructure Database (AUDA-NEPAD's continental registry behind PIDA), fetched from its public API with dated requests. Registry entries are project preparations (sometimes at feasibility or structuring stage) and their figures are the registrant's own. They are shown as a distinct layer (violet diamonds) with their own table, and they are never counted in facility totals, capacity sums, or pipeline megawatts. Where a registry claim conflicts with an independent source (as the DARE1 capacity figures do), we publish both with the divergence noted.

Certification, read precisely

Most Kenyan data centre marketing uses “Tier III” loosely. Uptime Institute issues three distinct things, and the difference is money:

  • Tier Certification of Design Documents (TCDD), Uptime reviewed the drawings. Nothing has been inspected. These certificates carry expiry dates.
  • Tier Certification of Constructed Facility (TCCF), Uptime inspected and demonstration-tested the finished building. Substantially stronger.
  • Tier Certification of Operational Sustainability (TCOS), Uptime assessed how the facility is actually run.

“Built to Tier III standards” is a design statement by the operator, not a third-party certification, and directory entries say which is which. Where a facility carries no Uptime certification at all, the entry says that too, without treating it as a fault: plenty of excellent facilities are uncertified, but they should be priced differently.

How we handle estimates

Some important figures are simply not published anywhere, and pretending otherwise would break the trust this site runs on. When we estimate, the estimate is labelled as an estimate, shown with its reasoning, and kept out of headline stat rows. Estimated figures live inside article bodies where there is room to explain the calculation, and they carry the ESTIMATE label described in the Editorial Policy. Headline statistics on the homepage and in the directory are always drawn from the verified dataset.

Update log

Every correction and reclassification is logged here, dated, including our own errors, because a directory that never admits mistakes is telling you it never checks.

26 September 2026

  • Olkaria corridor article: added a 'Three Models Now Compete for the Same Load' section framing compute-to-the-wells against Ethiopian hydro imports (200 to 400 MW planned, subject to grid testing) and the announced Lamu LNG plant (about 1,000 MW, roughly 500 MW offered, no PPA public). The section states the figure discipline explicitly: operating capacity, planned trade volume and announcement are different stages of certainty and are not summed. Internal links and the sources footer updated.
  • Ethiopia exports article: added a 'Where This Sits Among Kenya's Power Options' section placing imports alongside the Olkaria corridor and the announced Lamu plant, restating the status labels (planned trade volume vs announcement attached to an unbuilt refinery) and naming the update trigger (a Lamu PPA or financing close). Image caption figure refreshed 38.5 to 42.9 MW to match the site-stats canonical 'live designed capacity' label. Internal links updated.
  • Dangote Lamu article: the Olkaria geothermal corridor mention in the three-model paragraph is now an inline link; both sibling articles were already linked.
  • /energy hub and chatbot: the Energy cluster page description now names the three models; a Dangote Lamu fact chunk was added to the chatbot knowledge base carrying announcement-status language identical to the Microsoft-G42 chunk (treat 500 MW as an announcement, not bankable pipeline), and the green-power answer names the three models with a link to the Lamu analysis.

26 September 2026

  • New article /articles/dangote-lamu-refinery-power-plant-data-centres: covers the 26 September 2026 announcement of a 1,000 MW power plant at the proposed Lamu refinery with ~500 MW offered to the Kenyan government. The article stages every figure as an announcement, flags the refinery-capacity discrepancy across outlets (roughly 220,000 to 700,000 barrels per day as reported), establishes from The Africa Report that the plant is LNG-fired rather than renewable, sets the scale against the directory's live figures (42.9 MW built capacity, 10.5 MW published IT load, 230 MW pipeline, ~3,000 MW installed grid capacity), and records the Lamu coal-plant precedent (1,050 MW Amu Power licence revoked 2019) as part of the project's risk profile.
  • Policy intelligence source registry: added the Kenyans.co.ke report (full text captured) and The Africa Report LNG reporting (snippet capture, paywalled) as tier-2 reference records with explicit no-claim-yet notes; candidate background evidence for the energy-electricity pillar. Dataset bumped from r15 to r16.
  • Imagery: the article uses photographs of the Ruto-Dangote walkthrough at the Lekki refinery (supplied by the editor and uploaded to the repository) for the hero and announcement sections, an explicitly labelled artistic impression of the proposed Lamu layout flagged as promotional material, and existing verified infrastructure photography for the grid and geothermal sections. No AI-generated imagery was retained for this article.

26 September 2026

  • Policy intelligence source registry: added the IT News Africa report of the MTN Digital Infrastructure / Africa Data Hub Holding Limited partnership (31 Aug 2026, full text captured 26 Sep) as a tier-2 reference record. It is a commercial market development, not a policy claim, so it is registered with an explicit note that it supports no claim yet and is candidate background evidence for the ai-digital-policy and regional-frameworks pillars. Dataset bumped from r14 to r15.
  • MTN analysis article (mtn-africa-data-hub-ai-data-centres): the IT News Africa citation used the publisher's older /2026/08/ path, which only resolves via redirect; updated to the canonical /enterprise/digital-transformation/ path and verified live (HTTP 200).
  • Re-verified the article against the captured source text: every material fact (Africa Data Hub Holding Limited vehicle, Bayobab's shareholder role, the Mroué and Al Ashram quotes, the South Africa and Nigeria initial focus, Ambition 2030 framing) was already present and accurate; no content change was needed.
  • Re-checked the external crawler report's remaining items against the live site and the four earlier audit passes: the two genuine number-consistency findings were already fixed in passes 2-4, and the rest were crawler artefacts (guessed routes, XML rendering failures) confirmed with live HTTP checks recorded on 25 September.

26 September 2026

  • FAQ “How much new data centre capacity is coming to Kenya?”: the 232 MW figure summed announced pipeline across all tracked records including the East African reference builds; the question asks about Kenya, so the answer is now the Kenya-scoped 230 MW.
  • FAQ “Which Kenyan data centres are AI-ready?”: read “5 of the 31 tracked facilities”, using the full register as denominator for a Kenya-scoped question; now “5 of the 27 Kenyan facilities in the directory”.
  • Directory page: fixed a stray space before the comma in “free to download and cite”.
  • DigitalOcean analysis article: cross-reference to the market-numbers explainer updated from “26 facilities” to “27 verified facilities” following the 19 September directory update, and the article's updated_date moved accordingly.

25 September 2026

  • Chatbot FAQ “How many data centres does Kenya have?”: said “16 tracked data centre facilities, of which 12 are operational”, a superseded snapshot from an earlier register. It now derives the answer from the live directory like the FAQ page does: 27 verified Kenyan facilities, 20 operational, plus 4 East African reference records (31 tracked).
  • Chatbot FAQ “Which Kenyan data centres are AI-ready?”: said “12 of the 16 tracked facilities”. The AI-ready flag is held by 5 of the 27 tracked Kenyan facilities; the answer is now dataset-derived.
  • Chatbot FAQ “Who operates Kenya's data centres?”: said “12 tracked operators”. The directory tracks 18; the answer is now dataset-derived.
  • Chatbot FAQ “How much new data centre capacity is coming to Kenya?”: said “roughly 171 MW” and named the Microsoft–G42 campus as part of it. The announced pipeline is 230 MW (77 MW of it under construction across iXAfrica NBOX1.2, Africa Data Centres Nairobi 2 and Nxtra by Airtel Tatu City), and G42's own directory record warns the project has stalled on grid power constraints, so the answer now separates the two and derives the total from the dataset constant.
  • Chatbot Microsoft–G42 fact chunk: described the project as “pending grid capacity” and “the single largest project in Kenya's data centre pipeline”. It now carries the same caveat as the directory record: no site confirmed, stalled on grid power, treat the 100 MW as an announcement, not bankable pipeline.
  • Chatbot FAQ “How many submarine cables”: kept 7 in service (re-verified against the dataset) but now states 10 systems tracked and names Daraja and LuLu as in development; “awaits full service” tightened to “awaits ready-for-service”.
  • Chatbot FAQ “Do you need a licence...”: refreshed with the September 2026 CA standalone-licence consultation (tiered annual fees to KSh 100,000 or 0.4 percent of turnover, whichever is higher, submissions due on or about 8 October 2026 to datacentres@ca.go.ke) and now links Policy Intelligence alongside the explainer.
  • Directory meta description: the 25 Sep pass log said the city split was fixed “in both the meta description and the body copy”, but only the body was reordered; the meta description still read 27 facilities with a 19 + 4 city split that does not sum. It now reads the full split (19 Nairobi, 4 Mombasa, and the remaining 4 named by city), computed from the dataset alongside the body copy so the two can never drift or fail to sum again.
  • Also re-verified live: every internal link on /infrastructure/map resolves HTTP 200 (the crawler's ten guessed routes never existed), robots.txt “Disallow: /api/” affects only search indexing while the /directory CSV link keeps working for users, and /api/directory/csv serves HTTP 200.

25 September 2026

  • Annual review (research/state-of-kenyan-data-centres-2026): the headline KPI counted all 31 directory records (22 operational) under a review titled “State of Kenyan Data Centres”. It now reads 27 facilities tracked, 20 operational in Kenya. The carrier-neutral footnote and the pipeline-to-watch grid are Kenya-scoped too, so the 2 regional under-construction reference records no longer appear as Kenyan pipeline, and the intro states the 27 + 4 split explicitly.
  • Research hub: the Brief/01 card carried the 21 September snapshot figures (26 facilities, 186 MW pipeline); it now shows the current dataset (27 facilities, 230 MW pipeline). “122 top networks” and “8/20 carrier-neutral” were re-verified against the dataset and are unchanged.
  • Brief/01 PDF: the downloadable edition was minted 21 September from an earlier snapshot (26 facilities, 186 MW announced) with no marker separating it from the live page it is an edition of. It was first stamped with a visible data-snapshot note, then fully re-minted the same week from the current dataset: cover bullets, the Section 1 stat strip and Figure 1 now read 27 facilities, 42.9 MW built, 230 MW announced and 10.5 MW published IT load, with the under-construction stage restated as 77 MW across three projects (iXAfrica NBOX1.2, Africa Data Centres Nairobi 2, Nxtra by Airtel Tatu City). The temporary stamp is retired and the cover states the dataset verification month (2026-09) like the live page. Section 2 figures (122 networks, 8 of 20 carrier-neutral) were re-verified and are unchanged.
  • Directory intro: reordered the sentence so the city split (Nairobi, Mombasa, the rest) attaches to the 27 Kenyan facilities rather than reading as a split of the 20 operational — in both the meta description and the body copy. The numbers themselves were already correct.
  • Megawatt figures cross-checked and confirmed as three different labelled metrics, not contradictions: 10.5 MW published in-service IT load, 42.9 MW built (designed) capacity of live sites, 230 MW announced pipeline, 272.9 MW total tracked supply. Also re-verified live: sitemap.xml (HTTP 200, 179 URLs), /infrastructure/map (200), /api/directory (200), unique titles on methodology/corrections/editorial-policy.
  • Advisory, owner decision pending (not a factual error): the site runs on a vercel.app subdomain, the contact address is a gmail inbox, and the brand mixes “centers” (domain) with “centres” (editorial style).

24 September 2026

  • Homepage “The DC Directory” band: the status line under “Every known data-centre facility in Kenya” was counting all 31 tracked records (22 operational · 5 under construction · 1 committed · 3 early stage), which includes 4 East African reference records. It is now scoped to Kenya as the heading promises: 20 operational · 3 under construction · 1 committed · 3 early stage (27 facilities).
  • FAQ “How many data centres does Kenya have?”: the answer said “31 facilities across Kenya, of which 22 operational” — both figures are region-wide (31 records and 22 operational include 2 operational records in Kampala). It now reads: 31 records = 27 Kenyan facilities + 4 East African reference facilities, 20 of them operational in Kenya.
  • Annual review metadata description dropped its hardcoded “26 tracked facilities” (a superseded snapshot count); the page body already states it draws live from the full register.
  • Audited and confirmed correct, no change needed: sitemap.xml (live HTTP 200, 179 URLs), /infrastructure/map (live HTTP 200), /api/directory (live HTTP 200), unique metadata titles on methodology/corrections/editorial-policy, and the directory page's internally consistent 27/20/19/4 arithmetic.

18 September 2026

  • Fixed the homepage stat strip: “Subsea cables live” now reads directly from the verified cable dataset (7 live of 9 systems) instead of a hardcoded number, the explainer count updates itself from the article index (97), and the verification stamp moved to September 2026.
  • Listed the Rack Report PDF editions (Issues 001 and 002) on the Research page alongside the report PDFs.

8 September 2026

  • Added the four iColo (Digital Realty) facilities (NBO1, NBO2, MBA1, MBA2) previously missing despite MBA1 being the most interconnected building on the Kenyan coast (94 networks on PeeringDB).
  • Added PAIX Nairobi (Britam Tower), Safaricom Thika, Safaricom Red Hill (Limuru), Telkom Milimani, Telkom Telephone House (Nairobi and Mombasa), Konza National Data Centre, SEACOM Mombasa cable landing station, and SimbaNET Nairobi.
  • Removed Wingu Nairobi after checking the operator's own website, which names only Djibouti, Ethiopia and Tanzania, Wingu does not operate in Kenya, despite appearing in many round-ups (including ours previously).
  • Removed Africa Data Centres Mombasa: no operator page, no register entry, and no independent evidence supports it.
  • Reclassified ADC Nairobi 2 as under construction, ADC's own site lists only NBO1 in Nairobi, and no source confirms the January 2023 expansion completed.
  • Withdrew the capacity figures previously shown for Raxio Nairobi and reclassified it as early stage, the facility does not appear on the PeeringDB register (checked 8 Sep 2026) and no operator page confirms an opened Nairobi site.
  • Updated iColo NBO2 for its formal launch on 7 September 2026 (Capital FM / Digital Realty), still ramping on interconnection.
  • Cross-checked every PeeringDB-registered Kenyan facility (14 records fetched 8 Sep 2026) and added per-entry network and exchange counts.

Corrections policy

If a figure is wrong, we want it fixed fast. Email elmaccommunicationslimited@gmail.com with the entry, the figure you are challenging, and a primary source. Corrections are acknowledged within 48 hours and, where your source checks out, applied within five working days with the verification date updated. Material corrections are noted on the page itself and in the full public log on the corrections page, accuracy beats ego.

Who is behind DC254

DC254 is built and run by Kevin Jonathan Otieno (Elmac Communications Ltd), a Kenyan-owned, independent research effort tracking East Africa's digital infrastructure in public. The dataset, the verification dates and the correction log on this site are maintained in the open, so every reader can see not just what we claim, but how old each claim is and when we got it wrong.

Independence rule: no operator, vendor or investor pays for coverage, listings, ratings or removals, and any future sponsored material will be clearly labelled as sponsored, separate from the verified dataset. When a company featured here disputes an entry, the challenge, the source and the outcome are handled through the corrections policy above, not quietly edited away.

The background and reasoning behind this approach is set out in the Editorial Policy. For interviews, briefings or bulk data, use the contact page.

Citing DC254

You are welcome to cite our data in reports, articles, and briefs. Please credit “Data Centre 254” with a link to the relevant page, and include the verification date shown on the entry (for example: “DC254 Directory, verified September 2026”). For bulk data, interviews, or briefing requests, contact us.