Microsoft’s billion-dollar Kenya AI data center sparks blackout fears as power grid struggles with massive electricity demand surge | Daily Reports Online
- Kenya says its electricity grid cannot sustain the proposed one-gigawatt Microsoft facility demand
- President Ruto warns powering the project would require nationwide electricity rationing measures
- The initial 100-megawatt phase already strains Olkaria geothermal output capacity
A proposed Microsoft 1-gigawatt data center in Kenya would demand so much electricity that the nation simply cannot supply that power.
Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-based G42 announced the project in May 2024 during President Ruto’s official visit to Washington DC, promising a geothermal-powered cloud region in the Olkaria area of Kenya’s Rift Valley region.
However Kenyan President William Ruto recently told a Nairobi audience that running this facility would force a terrible national choice.
Kenya goes dark if the data center comes up
“We would need to switch off half the country for the data center to be powered,” President Ruto said.
The stark reality is that Kenya lacks enough spare megawatts for this ambitious technology project; its entire power grid cannot even handle the facility’s enormous electricity appetite.
Kenya’s total national installed capacity sits between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts from all sources combined.
Its peak electricity demand already reached 2,444 megawatts in January 2025, during regular daily usage across the country, meaning a full 1-gigawatt data center would consume roughly one-third of the nation’s total power supply.
Even the first 100-megawatt phase would drain a significant share from the Olkaria geothermal complex, which currently produces only 950 megawatts across all its individual power plants working together.
No extra capacity exists for such a massive new electricity user anywhere on the Kenyan grid.
No solution in sight
John Tanui, principal secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Information, told Bloomberg that the project has not been formally withdrawn from consideration yet.
He claims both parties are still discussing the project, because the “scale of the data center they wanted to do still requires some structuring.”
The Kenyan government will not shut off half the country for any single private facility operating within its borders.
Microsoft refuses to accept less power than its original billion-dollar plan demanded for that specific location.
A separate 60-megawatt project with local developer EcoCloud remains under active discussion right now as a smaller alternative, but the main billion-dollar Olkaria proposal is stalled over capacity disagreements and missing electrical infrastructure across Kenya.
Microsoft spent $1.5 billion on G42 in 2024 after G42 agreed to remove Huawei equipment under American pressure.
Microsoft president, Brad Smith, called the Kenya project the “single biggest step forward” for digital technology in the country’s history – however, a step that demands a third of a nation’s electricity may not be a real step forward for Kenyan citizens.
A data center cannot be called progressive if it requires every other user to switch off their lights.
Nearly half of the US data center builds this year have been delayed or cancelled due to power shortages – and if Western economies are cancelling data centers due to power shortages, Africa, with its growing infrastructure needs, is likely not a region for power-hungry data center projects.
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