Airtel Africa has pushed back the operational launch of its Nxtra data centre in Kenya's Tatu City from the first quarter of 2027 to July 2027. The update was disclosed on Monday by newly appointed Airtel Kenya Managing Director Djibril Tobe.

The $150 million facility broke ground in September 2025 and is slated to become East Africa's largest data centre, with an estimated capacity roughly ten times that of any existing regional facility. According to Airtel, the site within Tatu City was chosen to take advantage of dedicated grid infrastructure and favorable tax conditions. Kenya's significant geothermal energy base, primarily from the Olkaria fields in the Rift Valley, has increasingly factored into data centre siting decisions as operators face pressure to manage power costs and sustainability commitments.

The project is designed around a 44-megawatt (MW) power capacity, to be delivered in two 22MW phases. Airtel has described the investment as part of a broader effort to reshape the continent's digital infrastructure. Kenya's existing data centre market includes operators such as Safaricom, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, and Africa Data Centres (PAIX), though none approach the scale Airtel is proposing for Tatu City.

The construction follows a major funding milestone for Airtel's data centre subsidiary. In April 2026, Airtel confirmed a $1 billion investment in Nxtra, backed by global investors including Alpha Wave Global, The Carlyle Group, and Anchorage Capital Group. The round brought Nxtra's valuation to $3.1 billion.

A portion of the funding was earmarked for scaling Nxtra's capacity in India from 300MW to 1 gigawatt (GW), as well as a $15 billion gigawatt-scale AI data centre campus developed in partnership with Google. The remainder is being directed toward strengthening Airtel's African operations.

Beyond the Kenya facility, the telecom operator has outlined expansion plans across several key markets, including Lagos (Nigeria), Kinshasa (DRC), Kampala (Uganda), and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). A 38MW hyperscale data centre in Eko Atlantic, Lagos, is expected to become Nigeria's largest upon completion.

The Kenya data centre is also drawing interest from major global technology firms. According to Djibril, ongoing negotiations are underway with companies such as Apple, Oracle, Google, and Microsoft, all of which are seeking partnerships to host locally. Data sovereignty considerations have grown more prominent across African markets following the enactment of frameworks such as Kenya's Data Protection Act in 2019, which governs how personal data is processed and stored.

"All the big players like Google, Microsoft, they're already talking to us. Oracle and Apple are also talking to us to be able to be hosted on that data centre, because that will make their services seamless. They can mirror all the servers within that data centre, and that will enhance the customer experience," he said on Monday.

For technology companies, hosting servers locally in Kenya offers tangible benefits: reduced latency for East African consumers, seamless streaming, faster cloud computing, and more responsive AI applications. Kenya is connected to multiple submarine cable systems — including EASSy, TEAMS, DARE1, PEACE, and SEACOM — providing robust international bandwidth links that underpin such services.

The broader East African region is undergoing a significant digital transformation, and Nxtra aims to provide world-class infrastructure that enhances cloud computing and expands digital capacity across the continent.

For context, Airtel's East Africa Nxtra facility, at 44 MW, would still fall short of Teraco JB4 Bredell's 50 MW facility — currently Africa's largest standalone data centre, located in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, South Africa.