American multinational tech giant Oracle will host its first public cloud region in Kenya at iXAfrica Data Centre’s Nairobi facility, marking a significant expansion of global cloud infrastructure into East Africa as demand for local data processing and regulatory data residency grows.
- •The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) region, announced by the Kenyan government in 2024, will be housed at iXAfrica; a hyperscale, carrier-neutral data centre designed to support cloud and artificial intelligence workloads.
- •The move places Kenya among a small group of African countries with locally hosted public cloud regions, reducing reliance on overseas data centres in Europe or South Africa.
- •For Oracle, the Nairobi region allows enterprises, governments and technology firms to run workloads within national borders, improving performance for latency-sensitive applications, and addressing data sovereignty requirements.
“With this collaboration, iXAfrica is leveraging the renewable energy, talent, and abundant submarine and national connectivity available in our market,” said Snehar Shah, CEO, iXAfrica.
iXAfrica’s campus, located near Nairobi’s main fibre routes and power infrastructure, is designed to support high-density computing and hyperscale cloud platforms. The facility has a planned capacity of 22.5 megawatts and is built to accommodate AI workloads of up to 50 kilowatts per rack. Moreover, more than 90% of the electricity supplying the data centre is sourced from renewable energy.
The collaboration comes as global cloud providers race to expand closer to emerging markets, driven by growth in mobile services, fintech, e-commerce and artificial intelligence. Kenya’s expanding technology sector and its role as a connectivity gateway for the region have made it an increasingly attractive location for large-scale digital infrastructure.
“Around the world, governments and enterprises rely on OCI for its security, scalability, and ability to run mission-critical workloads that enable innovation at scale. These unique capabilities and our collaboration with iXAfrica will further support the growth of the country’s digital economy,” said David Bunei, country leader Kenya, Oracle.
Oracle is a U.S. technology company that sells database software, cloud computing services and enterprise applications used by corporations and governments to run critical business systems. It is controlled by co-founder Larry Ellison, the sixth richest man in the world, who remains its largest shareholder.
