Kenya is already in the top 10 countries when it comes to electricity generation plants powered by geothermal. Kenya has the 6highest installed generation capacity and is inching closer to being one of the few countries in the world that have generation capacity from geothermal that is over 1,000 MW. Kenya’s current installed capacity from geothermal is 985 MW. According to, only New Zealand , Turkiye , Philippines , Indonesia , and the US have more generating capacity than Kenya.
With several projects at various stages of development, Kenya will soon cross the 1,000 MW mark. In some exciting news, it looks like the first 1,000 MW of that additional capacity will soon be realized through a proposed 1,000 MW data centre. Last week, Microsoft Corp. and G42 announced a comprehensive package of digital investments in Kenya, as part of an initiative with the Republic of Kenya’s Ministry of Information, Communications, and the Digital Economy.
The initiative will include four additional pillars that will be pursued with local partners: local-language AI model development and research; an East Africa Innovation Lab coupled with broad AI digital skills training; international and local connectivity investments; and collaboration with the government of Kenya to support safe and secure cloud services across East Africa.
The White House said, “The government of Kenya and Microsoft announced they are joining a partnership that plans to construct a 1-gigawatt data center in Naivasha, Kenya. The data center will be run on Microsoft Azure cloud services and offer access to cloud-based applications and services to organizations and individuals in Kenya and East Africa — allowing the Government of Kenya to move its data and services to trusted vendors.
This is a very interesting project. As the world looks to shift towards more renewable electricity generation projects, places like Kenya that already have more than a 90% share of renewables as part of their electricity generation mix will start to look like more attractive investment destinations. Large off-takers such as big data centers present an opportunity to unlock Kenya’s potential in the geothermal sector.