In a landmark development for Kenya's technological infrastructure and its ambitions in artificial intelligence, leading telecommunications provider Safaricom announced a strategic partnership with iXAfrica Data Centres, an iColo company, on May 15, 2025. This collaboration is set to construct East Africa’s first-ever data center specifically designed to be "AI-ready." This major investment is deemed critical for providing the robust, high-performance computing infrastructure necessary to support the burgeoning AI ecosystem not only in Kenya but also across the wider East African region.

The state-of-the-art facility will be engineered to handle the intensive computational demands of AI model training, machine learning workloads, and large-scale data processing. Its establishment is expected to significantly reduce latency for AI applications, enable greater data sovereignty by allowing sensitive data to be processed and stored locally, and foster innovation by providing local researchers, startups, and enterprises with access to world-class AI infrastructure. This joint venture between a local market leader, Safaricom, and an international data center specialist, iXAfrica, exemplifies a growing trend of collaborations aimed at introducing cutting-edge technological solutions to the African continent. The AI-ready data center is a foundational element for realizing the goals outlined in Kenya's National AI Strategy and will play a pivotal role in accelerating the adoption and development of AI-driven innovations across various sectors of the Kenyan economy.