Timothy Pesi

Africa data centres—those windowless fortresses of cloud computing—have become a quiet shorthand for economic seriousness. Where server racks rise, digital ambition follows. Yet the story of Africa data centres is not one of sweeping continental scale, but of sharp concentration. A handful of nations carry the digital backbone of more than 1.5 billion people. Roughly 40% of Africa’s data centres are clustered in just three countries: South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. A trio not merely hosting

East Africa is sitting on hydrocarbons. The question is: are they sitting idle? From the gas-rich coast of Tanzania to the oil basins of South Sudan and Uganda, the region’s energy map reads like a story of promise—heavy on discovery, lighter on production. International oil majors, Asian state-backed firms, and regional independents have all planted their flags. Yet production remains concentrated in a few pockets.

Africa is urbanising at breakneck speed. Every year, millions stream into cities chasing opportunity, education, and the elusive promise of modern life. But for many, the city does not greet them with glass towers and clean pavements. It greets them with corrugated iron, informal wiring, and water fetched by the jerrycan. In 2022, over 284.8 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lived in urban slum households—about 27% of the world’s total slum population.