Ryan Holmes, Chief Revenue Officer at Raxio Group, explains why Africa’s growing reliance on shared data centres is offering a glimpse of how digital infrastructure across EMEA could become more local, resilient and cost-effective.

For much of the past decade, data centre growth has been framed as a question of scale: bigger campuses, larger cloud regions, more megawatts. What is becoming clearer, however, is that the fastest expansion in activity and adoption is now happening in a very different part of the market. Shared data centres are expanding more quickly than both hyperscale facilities and enterprise-owned infrastructure – a signal that the industry is reassessing how capital, risk and proximity should be balanced.

That this shift is most visible in Africa reflects a familiar pattern of leapfrogging seen in other sectors. Just as mobile phones bypassed fixed-line networks, and mobile money systems leapfrogged traditional banking, African markets are rethinking the path to cloud computing. Rather than scaling directly from small, in-house company server rooms to offshore hyperscale cloud infrastructure – with the associated delays, higher connectivity costs and data sovereignty trade-offs – many organisations are anchoring their digital infrastructure in shared, professionally-operated local platforms. In doing so, they are avoiding some of the expensive lessons learned elsewhere and aligning earlier with how digital infrastructure is increasingly consumed globally: cloud-enabled, but locally grounded.

In countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania, shared data centres – often referred to as colocation – are no longer a transitional solution or a placeholder while waiting for hyperscalers to arrive. They are becoming the backbone of how digital infrastructure is being deployed and used across Africa’s next wave of growth markets.

As with previous leapfrogging moments on the continent, this shift is being driven by necessity rather than theory: rapidly rising data volumes, the emergence of AI-driven applications, tighter expectations around data sovereignty, and a clear move away from capital-intensive, self-managed IT environments.

AI workloads are arriving earlier than expected

One of the clearest catalysts of this change is the early arrival of AI-driven workloads, alongside growing demand for intensive computing power to support AI training, advanced data analytics and real-time processing.

These workloads are already embedded in everyday operations across fintech, telecommunications, mining, logistics, healthcare and public services. What matters most in all of these use cases is straightforward: systems must be fast, reliable, and able to keep sensitive data where it belongs.

For many years, African organisations had little choice but to process and store data offshore. That model is increasingly out of step with modern needs. AI systems perform best when data does not have to travel long distances, which can introduce delays and reduce reliability – known as latency. At the same time, data volumes are expanding rapidly, and regulatory expectations around where sensitive information resides are becoming stricter.

As a result, data gravity is shifting closer to the point of use. Enterprises are no longer willing to accept the performance, cost and governance trade-offs that come with hosting critical systems thousands of miles away.

Shared data centre platforms offer a practical response: proximity, scalability and a reduced ownership burden.

Data sovereignty as an accelerant, not a constraint

This shift in how digital infrastructure is being deployed across Africa is unfolding against a rapidly evolving approach to data sovereignty.

Across the continent, governments are seeking greater control over how sensitive data is stored, processed and transferred. This is being driven by a mix of concerns: privacy and citizen protection, national security, economic participation, and a desire to reduce long-term digital dependence.

While some countries initially experimented with strict data localisation, the prevailing African approach has become more pragmatic. Data sovereignty is increasingly pursued through conditional controls on cross-border data flows, selective localisation of sensitive government or citizen data, and a growing emphasis on local infrastructure presence rather than absolute state ownership.

In practice, these policies are drawing digital infrastructure closer to users. By anchoring workloads locally while still enabling connectivity, scale and interoperability, shared data centres offer a practical way for governments and enterprises to meet sovereignty objectives without sacrificing performance, resilience or access to modern cloud and AI capabilities.

In this context, regulation is reinforcing the case for local shared platforms rather than pushing digital innovation offshore – a dynamic increasingly visible across EMEA as governments balance openness with resilience.

The hyperscaler gap – and what is filling it

Despite the momentum behind AI and cloud adoption, hyperscale operators remain largely absent from most African markets outside the biggest economies such as South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

That absence has not slowed digital adoption. Instead, it has reshaped it.

Across these emerging markets, enterprises are increasingly adopting hybrid and private cloud models delivered through professionally-operated shared data centres. Rather than waiting for hyperscale regions to materialise, organisations are moving workloads out of fragile on-premises server rooms and into environments that offer predictable power, cooling, physical security and access to multiple network providers.

This reflects a broader continental trend. Enterprises are shifting towards operating expense, or opex-based, infrastructure models from capex. They need reliable interconnection to multiple carriers. And they want availability, compliance and cyber resilience without owning the operational risk themselves.

Shared data centres have become the default bridge between legacy IT and future cloud adoption – a pattern now informing operator strategies, investment flows and procurement decisions well beyond Africa, including in parts of Europe and the Middle East facing similar sovereignty and resilience pressures.

The government paradox

The contrast is particularly evident in the public sector.

Across several markets, governments continue to pursue state-built, state-operated data centres in pursuit of sovereignty and control. While well-intentioned, these projects often deliver the opposite of what is intended: higher total cost of ownership, slower deployment, under-utilised facilities, weaker security and limited ability to scale for modern workloads such as AI.

Ironically, by avoiding partnerships with neutral, shared data centre platforms, governments can end up with infrastructure that is less secure, less resilient and more expensive than established private-sector alternatives.

The missed opportunity

Africa’s shared data centre market is maturing quickly.

Private operators are delivering data centres designed to run continuously, even during maintenance or unexpected outages, to Tier III standards, while investing in resilient power strategies and helping to build regional digital ecosystems in markets that previously had few credible hosting options. In countries such as Angola, Ethiopia and the DRC, shared data centres can increasingly function as national digital infrastructure, supporting government systems, enterprise workloads, cloud on-ramps and emerging AI platforms at the same time.

Rather than duplicating effort, there is a clear opportunity for governments to anchor public-sector demand in neutral shared facilities, improve national cyber resilience, reduce capital expenditure and accelerate the delivery of digital services – lessons that are increasingly relevant for European and UK policymakers navigating similar trade-offs around localisation, resilience and supply chain security.

The takeaway

By 2026, the question for African enterprises is no longer whether they should move away from on-premises infrastructure, but how quickly they should do so.

For governments, the question is whether control in the digital age is best achieved through ownership, or through partnership with secure, professionally operated shared data centre platforms.