Countries / Africa
South Africa
Africa's largest data centre market has no national AI policy after the draft was withdrawn, and power access is the stated limit on growth.
South Africa hosts most of the continent's data centre capacity and all three big cloud providers have a presence. The draft National AI Policy was published on 10 April 2026 and withdrawn on 26 April 2026 over fabricated citations in its reference list, so there is no settled AI policy. The 2026 Budget statement treated data infrastructure as critical as electricity, ports and transport, but data centres are not yet classed as critical infrastructure and tax and grid incentives are only under consideration. For someone seeking compute, the practical options are Johannesburg and Cape Town colocation and cloud, a GPU-as-a-service factory that began deploying in March 2026, and a national supercomputer that is being replaced.
AI policy and activity
The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies draft National AI Policy (Government Gazette Notice 3880) proposed an AI commission, ethics board, regulator and safety institute, plus sandboxes and accelerators, but was withdrawn by the Minister on 26 April 2026. A reported ministerial council was still deliberating a replacement in early 2026.
Power and grid
Engineering News (22 July 2026) reports 50 or more data centres totalling about 350 MW and quotes Eskom saying there is no pressure on the grid. Treasury commentary names electricity access as the limiting factor for growth, and reliability is reported to have improved markedly since 2024 when daily power cuts occurred. Data centres are not yet classified under the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.
Data centres and compute
| Site | Where | Status | Notes and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teraco Isando campus Teraco (owned by Digital Realty) | Johannesburg | Operating | Described as Africa's largest data centre complex at about 70 MW IT load. Teraco is also reported to be building a 120 MW solar farm in the Free State and about 900 million dollars of new facilities. (source) |
| Waterfall campus Vantage Data Centers | Midrand | Planned | Reported investment of about 1 billion dollars. (source) |
| Cassava AI Factory Cassava Technologies, with Nvidia | South Africa | Operating | Deployment began March 2026. Cassava's founder says it has acquired 12,000 Nvidia GPUs. Expansion to Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco is planned. (source) |
| Lengau Centre for High Performance Computing, CSIR | Cape Town | Operating | 1 petaflop system from 2016, hit by a crypto-mining intrusion in May to June 2026 and being replaced. (source) |
Rules and programmes
| Instrument | Kind | Status | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft National AI Policy 2026 | Policy | Ended | Secondary summary. Published 10 April 2026, withdrawn 26 April 2026. It contains no specific compute or data centre proposals. |
| 2026 Budget: data infrastructure and possible data centre incentives | Tax or incentive | Proposed | Trade press report. Treasury is reported to be considering lower tax rates, accelerated depreciation, VAT relief on imported servers and power equipment, and faster grid connections. None confirmed as enacted. |
| CHPC Lengau replacement (national supercomputer) | Programme | In force | Trade press, 25 August 2026. ZAR 292 million allocated for 2026/27 for a roughly 4 petaflop replacement, phase 1 due end of November 2026 and completion around March 2027. |
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.