‘Despite Infrastructure Growth, Africa Accounts for Less Than 1% of Global Compute Capacity’ 

Emma Okonji

Africa has built more digital infrastructure in the last decade, yet the continent continues to capture only a small fraction of global compute capacity as hyperscale and AI-driven investments continue to accelerate globally.

This was revealed by the Managing Partner at Xalam Analytics, Guy Zibi, who spoke during the Africa Hyperscalers Conversations webinar that examined how the next phase of Africa’s digital infrastructure growth could depend less on connectivity expansion alone and more on where workloads are actually run.

According to Zibi, Africa today hosts roughly 500 to 600 megawatts of live data centre IT capacity alongside about 60 subsea cables, 145 cable landing points, approximately 1.4 million kilometers of terrestrial fiber and around 150 cloud and content delivery network points of presence, yet the continent still accounts for less than one per cent of global compute capacity.

According to the discussion, anchored by the Director, Africa Hyperscalers and host of ‘A Global View Conversations’, Mr. Temitope Osunrinde, the shift reflects a structural change in global infrastructure investment rather than a slowdown in African deployment. Hyperscale campuses and AI-driven compute clusters are increasingly being built at gigawatt scale in the United States, Europe, the Gulf and parts of Asia, expanding the global capacity base faster than emerging markets can catch up with.

Zibi noted that the key distinction was between absolute infrastructure growth and relative global positioning, explaining that while Africa’s connectivity footprint has expanded significantly, the continent’s share of global public cloud usage remains around 0.3 per cent, with roughly 0.2 per cent of global AI compute resources located locally.

The session also highlighted the role of “meaningful connectivity” as a prerequisite for local compute market formation.

Roughly 700 million Africans now use 4G, 5G or fiber-based broadband, creating a foundation for digital service expansion, though sustained workload concentration remains necessary before large-scale cloud regions typically emerge, the discussion revealed.

Public-sector digitization was identified as one of the most important drivers of early compute demand across emerging infrastructure markets. National identity systems, regulatory platforms and financial infrastructure were cited as examples of government workloads that can anchor local hosting ecosystems and reduce uncertainty for investors.

“When governments localize workloads, infrastructure follows,” Zibi noted.

The discussion further emphasised that hyperscaler expansion across Africa would continue to follow demand maturity rather than infrastructure availability alone. While cloud capacity has expanded through edge deployments and partner facilities in multiple markets, full hyperscaler regions remain concentrated in a small number of hubs.

The webinar session with Zibi further highlighted that the next phase of Africa’s digital infrastructure development would depend on coordination across three systems: cloud demand formation, power availability and terrestrial fiber expansion. Without alignment across these layers, the pace of compute deployment is likely to remain uneven, Zibi said.

Despite the decline in relative global share, Zibi stressed that Africa’s infrastructure trajectory remained positive in absolute terms. According to him, the key question is whether improvements in connectivity can translate into sustained domestic workload growth capable of supporting larger-scale compute ecosystems across the continent.