Microsoft’s Billion-Dollar Kenya Data Center Is in Trouble and the Numbers Explain Why
A proposed artificial intelligence data center in Kenya is under serious pressure after it emerged that the facility, at full capacity, would consume roughly a third of the entire country’s electricity supply. The scale of that demand has triggered a public backlash, stalled negotiations, and forced all parties back to the drawing board.
Kenya’s President William Ruto has spoken out directly on the matter, warning that powering the 1-gigawatt facility at its intended capacity would require cutting electricity to as many as half of the nation’s citizens and businesses. That is not a trade-off his government is willing to make and understandably so.
Microsoft originally announced the project in 2024, committing $1 billion toward building a geothermal-powered data center in the Olkaria region of the Rift Valley. The facility was designed to launch at 100 megawatts before scaling to a full gigawatt over time. The project is being developed through G42, an Emirati AI and cloud computing company in which Microsoft invested $1.5 billion that same year.
On paper, the vision was ambitious and forward-thinking. In practice, Kenya’s current energy infrastructure simply cannot support it. The country’s total installed electricity capacity sits between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts. Peak national demand runs at approximately 2,400 megawatts, meaning a 1-gigawatt data center would not just strain the grid, it would overwhelm it entirely.
There is no version of this project, at its proposed scale, that works without severe consequences for Kenyan households, businesses, and public services. The math is not close.
Discussions are now ongoing about scaling back the facility’s ambitions to something the national grid can realistically absorb. Whether Microsoft and G42 are willing to significantly reduce the project’s scope remains to be seen, but with the country’s president publicly raising the alarm, the pressure to do so is mounting.
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