Countries / Africa
Kenya
Kenya has an AI strategy and localisation rules for strategic data, but its flagship 1 GW geothermal data centre is stalled over power.
The 2025-2030 AI Strategy puts digital infrastructure and data ecosystems at its core. Data protection rules require some strategic processing to stay in Kenya, and a December 2024 Cloud Policy encourages local hosting of sensitive government and critical-infrastructure data. The Microsoft and G42 geothermal data centre at Olkaria was announced in May 2024 but reports in May 2026 describe it as suspended or stalled after the President said its roughly 1 GW demand was a disproportionate share of national supply. For someone seeking compute, Kenya is a smaller colocation and cloud-adjacent market for now.
AI policy and activity
The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy published the Kenya AI Strategy 2025-2030, built on digital infrastructure, data ecosystems and AI research, and coordinated with AU, East African Community and Smart Africa work. A reported technical committee aimed to finalise a national AI policy by June 2026. A draft AI Code of Practice (April 2024) and a Robotics and AI Society Bill (November 2023) are reported but no primary AI law exists.
Power and grid
Reports give national capacity of 3,000 to 3,200 MW against a peak demand of 2,444 MW, which is why a 1 GW load was judged too large. Critical-infrastructure regulations (February 2024) require 24-hour breach reporting. Kenya is also reported to have about 19 data centres.
Data centres and compute
| Site | Where | Status | Notes and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olkaria geothermal AI data centre Microsoft with G42 | Olkaria, Rift Valley | Suspended | Announced May 2024 at about 1 billion dollars, with a 100 MW first phase and 1 GW long term. President Ruto said it would take roughly a third of national capacity. One report says suspended on 8 May 2026, another says negotiations continue after Kenya rejected capacity payment guarantees. Treat as not proceeding for now. (source) |
Rules and programmes
| Instrument | Kind | Status | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kenya AI Strategy 2025-2030 | Policy | In force | OECD.AI record linking the strategy PDF. Names infrastructure, data and research as pillars with nine priority sectors. |
| Data Protection (General) Regulations, 2021 | Law | In force from 14 February 2022 | Adopted 7 December 2021. Classified as containing a data localisation requirement; the exact scope was not visible on the page read, and a law-firm digest says it covers strategic data processing. |
| Cloud Policy | Policy | In force from 1 December 2024 | Law-firm style digest says the December 2024 policy encourages localisation of sensitive government and critical-infrastructure data. Day of month not confirmed. |
Checked on 2 October 2026 and due for review by 1 January 2027. Many sources are trade press or law-firm summaries rather than official texts, and statuses such as reported or unconfirmed are shown as the source gives them. This is a summary, not legal advice. If something is wrong or out of date, tell us.