Panel: What are the growth forecasts for African data centres and telecommunications networks and how does this translate into future power requirements across the continent?

Better quantification of the future shape and scale of Africa’s ICT ecosystem will aid energy regulators, grid operators and IPPs better prepare for meeting data centre and telecom network energy demands. This panel of experts will help paint a picture of how the energy demand is forecast to grow in Africa, where the growth will be felt, and what factors underlie these assumptions.

• How is traffic across mobile and fixed networks expected to grow?
• Forecasts for MNO rollout of 5G and adoption of new energy saving RAN features – to what extent will this increase in traffic be handled in a more energy efficient manner?
• How will the load of a typical cell tower evolve?
• How will data centre deployment play out across Africa? What hubs will emerge?
• What shape and size of data centres will we see?
• When can we expect significant GenAI workloads and cloud storage requirements?
• How are server innovations, data centre design are cooling impacting data centre power consumption and PUE
• What is the current and forecast energy demand of Africa’s fixed networks?
• What level and type of power redundancy and back-up power will digital infracos require?