The project, announced in May 2024 during President William Ruto’s visit to Washington, was expected to become one of the biggest digital infrastructure investments in East Africa. 

Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-based G42 planned to build the facility in Olkaria, near Naivasha, using geothermal power. It was also meant to host Microsoft’s first Azure cloud region in East Africa.

However, negotiations later became difficult after Microsoft and G42 asked the Kenyan government to guarantee annual payments for part of the data centre’s computing capacity. 

According to reports from Bloomberg, Kenya could not provide guarantees at the level the companies requested, and discussions on the Microsoft data centre project stalled.

The delay has now raised wider concerns about whether Kenya’s current infrastructure can support hyperscale data centres and growing artificial intelligence workloads.

At full scale, the facility was expected to require around 1 gigawatt of electricity. That is close to one-third of Kenya’s current installed power capacity, which stands between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts.

President Ruto had earlier warned about the pressure such a facility could place on the country’s grid.

“To switch on that one data centre, we would need to shut off power for half the country.”

Kenyan officials say the project has not been abandoned. John Tanui, principal secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Information, said discussions are still ongoing, although the structure and scale of the project is still under review.

“The scale of the data centre they wanted to do still requires some structuring,” he said, while adding that power requirements are still under discussion.

The government now wants to expand Kenya’s electricity capacity to 10,000 megawatts by 2030 as it pushes to attract more large-scale technology investments.

Officials are also considering a phased rollout, beginning with a smaller 100-megawatt facility before expanding gradually. That approach could reduce immediate stress on the national grid while allowing Kenya to continue negotiations with Microsoft and G42.

The uncertainty around the project also reveals a bigger challenge facing African countries trying to attract global cloud and AI investments. 

While demand for digital infrastructure is growing with speed, many countries still lack the power generation and transmission capacity needed to support energy-intensive facilities.

The delay could also affect the rollout of Microsoft Azure services across East Africa, including cloud tools tied to products such as OneDrive and Copilot.

Neither Microsoft nor G42 immediately responded to requests for comment on the reported Kenya data centre dispute.

This brings Meta’s total clean energy capacity from Invenergy to 1,800 MW, nearly doubling its earlier figure of 1,000 MW. It’s a direct response to the high energy demands driven by the company’s AI-focused infrastructure.

The new deals cover four major renewable projects scheduled to come online between 2027 and 2028: Yellow Wood Solar (300 MW) and Pleasant Prairie Solar (140 MW) in Ohio, Decoy Solar (155 MW) in Arkansas, and Seaway Wind (196 MW) in Texas. 

The electricity from these sites will feed into their respective regional power grids, but Meta will retain the renewable energy credits, effectively allowing the company to account for the clean power in its carbon reporting.

While financial terms remain undisclosed, the scale and scope of the deal involve Meta committing long-term to a diversified clean energy mix to meet the immense demands of AI processing.

Ted Romaine, executive vice president of Origination at Invenergy, said the partnership goes beyond another supply deal. “Winning the AI race requires reliable, cleaner, affordable energy and energy infrastructure — today and in the future. We’re grateful for our continued relationship with Meta and look forward to future partnerships as we work to strengthen American energy independence and economic prosperity.”

Meta recently inked a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy for 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear energy from the Clinton Clean Energy Centre in Illinois. It also joined forces with geothermal developer XGS Energy to build a 150 MW water-independent geothermal facility in New Mexico.

Urvi Parekh, Meta’s Head of Global Energy, stressed the urgency behind these moves. “We’re laser-focused on advancing our AI ambitions—and to do that, we need clean, reliable energy. We’re grateful for Invenergy’s longtime partnership that helps us support our energy needs and implement our clean energy goals, and look forward to continued collaboration.”

At the heart of this strategy is a transition toward long-term, stable, and zero-carbon energy sources that can reliably support Meta’s future AI workload. 

The company’s model now relies on both immediate and forward-looking procurement, blending traditional renewables with more experimental and baseload options like nuclear and geothermal.

These infrastructure investments are expected to yield economic benefits. Beyond environmental impact, the projects are projected to create jobs and strengthen local economies in the host states, while also supporting national efforts towards energy independence.

Invenergy, headquartered in Chicago, is currently the largest privately owned clean energy developer in the United States. Its role in powering Meta’s massive data infrastructure reveals how private-sector energy partnerships are becoming indispensable to the tech industry’s future.