Africa’s server capacity surges but power a major obstacle

Sub-Saharan Africa’s server capacity surged by 25.8% in 2024, according to a report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. 

The institute says that the region is seeking to scale and catch up through massive investment in large numbers of less cutting-edge, lower-value servers, leading to average server revenue growth of 34.8% this year. 

Côte d’Ivoire is leading the way, with server revenue growth anticipated to reach 84.3% over the next five years. Recent investments such as the newly opened CIV1 data centre in Abidjan, which aims to bolster capacity across the wider West African Economic and Monetary Union, will be central to this growth.

As more mature ecosystems, such as South Africa, expand their ecosystems with new initiatives and collaborations, these server investments have led to countries such as Rwanda, Senegal and Mauritius becoming leading contributors to the region’s capacity, the report says. Senegal is now a top-ten country for forecast server revenue growth over the next five years.

Infrastructure poses difficulties 

With the growing importance of data solutions, whether or not a country has the correct infrastructure could create a new digital divide.

With sub-Saharan Africa experiencing an average of 7.3 grid outages per month, power-grid reliability is still a major obstacle. Infrastructure solutions will be “key to realising the value of the region’s server investments,” the report states. 

Countries such as Nigeria are seeking innovative solutions, such as solar-plus-storage systems or co-locating data centres near solar installations, to alleviate strain on the grid and enable their digital potential.

In Kenya, Microsoft is investing $1bn in a geothermal-powered data centre to increase the energy resilience of its compute ecosystem, the report adds.

Local data centre company EcoCloud and Abu Dhabi-based technology firm G42 have announced a similar scheme.

Africa’s tech talent pipeline

Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya are experiencing substantial year-on-year growth in software engineers, at 40%, 39% and 29% respectively. And Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, have shown high growth in the size of their developer communities.

However, challenges are holding back opportunities for African talent. There has not been an increase in the availability of compute training programmes via major commercial leaders.

In cloud computing, the term “compute” describes concepts and objects related to software computation. It is a generic term used to reference processing power, memory, networking, storage, and other resources required for the computational success of any program, according to AWS.

With the lack of institutional training, some talent may be turning to informal channels to train themselves, the report says.

“This means that despite higher levels of STEM graduates, sub-Saharan Africa is not developing strong human-capital pipelines to compute roles.” 

Two changes are recommended by the report: an increase in edge computing – where data processing takes place on a device or local server, rather than a data centre – and more opportunities for the region’s skilled workforce within local compute ecosystems.

“Without these changes, the local talent pool is likely to seek opportunities elsewhere – and this could stymie the growth of the region’s access to compute.”