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Africa’s data centre market is expected to expand rapidly in the coming years, requiring between $10 billion and $20 billion in fresh investment as demand for computing capacity surges.
Knight Frank, a global real estate consultancy and property investment advisory firm, made the assessment in its Africa Report 2026/27, which examines real estate markets, investment trends, and emerging opportunities across the continent.
The consultancy said the expansion is being driven by the rapid growth of cloud services, artificial intelligence, and other data-intensive digital services across African markets.
What Knight Frank is saying
Knight Frank said Africa’s demand for data centre capacity could increase between three and five times by 2030.
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- “Demand is projected to expand by approximately 3 to 5 times by 2030, driven by the localisation of cloud services, streaming, fintech platforms, and AI workloads,” the report said.
- “This implies a capital requirement of approximately US$ 10–20 bn in new data centre development and, critically, associated power infrastructure,” it added.
The projection highlights data centres as an emerging infrastructure opportunity as businesses and consumers increasingly depend on cloud computing, digital platforms and AI-powered services.
Knight Frank said the shift is also changing the investment profile of data centres, which are increasingly being treated as a distinct real estate asset class rather than simply technology infrastructure.
Nigeria emerges as West Africa’s data centre hub
Nigeria is emerging as a key market in Africa’s projected data centre expansion, with Knight Frank identifying the country as the anchor of regional demand in West Africa.
- “In West Africa, Nigeria anchors regional demand, underpinned by a large enterprise base, subsea cable diversity, and a growing regulatory emphasis on local hosting,” the report said.
Knight Frank estimates that Nigeria had approximately 66 MW of third-party core-and-shell data centre capacity as of late 2024, with several hundred megawatts in the development pipeline.
The country’s large enterprise base, diverse subsea cable connections and growing regulatory emphasis on local data hosting are supporting demand for domestic data centre capacity.
Lagos is at the centre of this opportunity, with Knight Frank identifying the city as a potential low-latency hub serving the wider ECOWAS market.
Get up to speed
Nigeria’s data centre market has already been on a strong growth trajectory, with a separate November 2025 report by Estate Intel projecting installed capacity to increase from 56.1 MW in 2025 to more than 218 MW by 2030.
That would represent an almost fourfold increase over five years, with Estate Intel describing the sector as having maintained steady momentum since the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the resilience and strategic importance of digital infrastructure.
At the continental level, a July 2026 report by Fortren & Company found that Africa’s operational data centre capacity had surpassed 500 MW, with another 890 MW of projects in development.
The report attributed the expansion to growing demand for cloud computing, AI, data storage and digital transformation.
What you should know
Nairametrics earlier reported that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed banks, payment service providers and fintech companies to localise customer and transaction data within Nigeria by January 2027.
The policy is emerging as a major catalyst for the country’s digital infrastructure industry.
While some industry stakeholders have raised concerns about implementation costs and infrastructure readiness, operators of Nigeria’s largest data centres say the policy could unlock significant investment, strengthen data sovereignty and reduce the country’s dependence on foreign infrastructure.
