Can Africa Power the AI Boom?

Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo explains why smaller edge data centers are spreading across Africa while large cloud hubs focus on South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. He debunks the water-usage myth, outlines a 100% renewable energy target backed by a 120 MW solar investment, and argues that massive AI training factories won’t land on the continent because power costs are too high. Instead, Africa’s opportunity lies in hosting AI inference models close to users. - African data center growth is led by edge sites, with South Africa as the main hub and Nigeria and Kenya emerging as secondary hubs. - Water consumption concerns are largely a myth; Teraco uses closed-loop cooling and consumes very little water. - Teraco targets 100% renewable energy by 2035 and has invested $125 million in a 120 MW utility-scale solar plant. - Large AI training data centers requiring gigawatts are not expected in Africa due to power infrastructure limits and uncompetitive electricity prices. - AI inference models that need low latency are seen as a better fit for African data centers. - Africa needs electricity costs around $0.06–$0.08/kWh to attract large-scale AI deployments, similar to the US and Middle East. - Private investment in grid infrastructure and public-private coordination are critical to Africa’s digital future.