Digital Infrastructure Outlook:

Innovation, Infrastructure, & Investment for 2026

Market Brief Keynote:

Overview:

Africa is entering a decisive phase in its digital journey. Across the continent, governments and industry leaders are announcing broadband expansion plans, data center pipelines, cloud strategies, and AI roadmaps at unprecedented speed. Yet a persistent gap remains between ambition and reality - between what is declared and what is actually built, financed, interconnected, and used.

The Digital Infrastructure Outlook 2026 is designed as a reality check. This high-level virtual session convenes policymakers, regulators, infrastructure operators, investors, and demand-side platforms to examine the hard foundations required to support Africa’s digital economy at scale. It moves beyond forecasts and announcements to focus on execution economics: what gets financed, what gets delayed, what gets stranded, and what ultimately gets built.

Why This Session Matters

2026 is no longer about vision-setting. It is about delivery.
Africa’s digital economy now depends on tangible assets: resilient fiber and wireless networks, interconnected and power-secure data centers, mature internet exchanges, cloud-ready regulatory frameworks, and capital structures that can survive investment committees. The challenge is no longer identifying what Africa needs. It is aligning policy, capital, coordination, and demand in ways that make infrastructure bankable and repeatable.
This session interrogates where delivery breaks down in practice and what must change in the next 24–36 months to move decisively from ambition to assets.

What the Outlook Will Address

The Africa Hyperscalers Digital Infrastructure Outlook will examine Africa’s digital infrastructure landscape through an execution lens, focusing on:
• The gap between pan-African demand signals and on-the-ground delivery realities
• Connectivity, data center, cloud, and power readiness across key markets
• Why some projects reach financial close while others stall indefinitely
• Where capital is actively flowing – and where it remains hesitant
• What infrastructure is likely to be operational by 2026, versus what risks remaining stranded
The discussion is grounded in real project experience, regulatory realities, and capital constraints – not aspirational narratives.

A Convening for Decision-Makers

This session brings together voices from across the infrastructure value chain, including:
• National regulators and digital economy policymakers
• Data center and cloud platform operators
• Telecom and connectivity providers
• Infrastructure investors and development finance institutions
• Enterprise CIOs, CTOs, and large demand-side platforms
The goal is not consensus, but clarity – to surface the real constraints holding back delivery and identify practical pathways to execution.