Signpost: AI factories set
to rise across Africa

Data centres have long been described as the heart of the digital world, but their evolution into what Nvidia calls AI factories represents a new industrial era. Where rows of servers used to store and process data, they now operate as engines of intelligence. The shift is redrawing the global technology map, and Africa finds itself surprisingly close to the frontier.

Digital infrastructure provider Vertiv seized the AI factory moment at is Vertiv Week 2025 conference, held at its customer experience centre in Tognana, Italy, last week. The company unveiled the CoolCenter Immersion system for AI and high-performance computing, but went beyond products, gathering some of Europe’s foremost voices on digital infrastructure. Unusually, it was Africa that repeatedly surfaced in the discussion. When Gadget asked the panel of experts how regions lagging behind Europe could keep pace with the evolution from data centres to AI factories, the answer was surprising: Africa is not waiting to catch up.

“South Africa is not behind,” said Lex Coors, president of the European Data Centre Association. “There are huge players in South Africa, and they are largely operating on clean energy, on solar. Other parts of Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and others, will make this leapfrog to the newest technology.”

He drew a parallel with the continent’s leap from no landlines to widespread mobile adoption. 

“That is definitely something that’s happening. It will also unlock the flow of money. In the past, if you wanted to transfer money, you had to go to a shop where you put down cash. That’s all changing.”

It was a reminder that infrastructure is more than cables and cooling systems. The same forces that turned mobile phones into platforms for commerce and banking are now converging on data and computation. Africa’s digital economy, built on mobile-first innovation, is naturally primed for the next leap.

Luisa Cardani, head of the data centres programme at TechUK, posed a challenge: “If you want to be a superpower for the future and future-proof your economy, you need clean, renewable, cheap power to power the computer and the digital economy. If you haven’t clocked that as a government, you’re already behind.”

Her warning almost suggests a new kind of industrial race. Nations that secure abundant, renewable energy will shape the contours of the digital economy. In that sense, Africa’s advantage in solar and wind resources may prove as strategic as its minerals once were for the industrial age.

Piotr Kowalski, managing director of the Polish Data Centres Association, spent several years building facilities across the continent and saw that shift first-hand. 

“South Africa is not falling behind,” he reiterated. It’s a very strong digital economy, with very strong digital infrastructure as well. If you look at other locations, like Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, there’s a lot of new data centres being constructed.”

He pointed to another layer of transformation: the submarine cables knitting Africa into the global fibre network. “There are a lot of new submarine cables coming into Africa. That will allow the connectivity between the continent and the remaining part of the world, and that will give you the opportunity to become competitive in that global market.”

That connectivity is expanding faster than most outsiders realise. Emmanuel Becker, CEO of Mediterra Datacenters and board member of the Italian Datacenter Association, described the enormous subsea project known as “2Africa”, which loops 40,000 kilometres around the continent before linking into the Middle East and Europe.

“It’s exactly the contrary of the early idea that Europe would control the flow,” he said. “We are supporting together. Each time one African country deploys a new digital app, it’s deploying a way of growing its own GDP, education, employment and exchange with other countries.”

He added a historical perspective. “It took twenty years for the first country, the UK, to deploy up to a certain level. Then ten years for Germany. But then five years for the next. Maybe the next country in Africa will be in one year.”

The convergence of solar power, subsea cables and AI-optimised cooling is setting the stage for a distinctly African contribution to global computing. The next generation of AI models may still be trained in vast clusters across Europe, America or Asia, but their reach will depend on the digital arteries running through Cape Town, Lagos, Nairobi and Accra.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.