How iX Africa Is Building A Carrier Neutral Data Center Hub In Kenya with CEO Snehar Shah
Tech Talk AfricaPlay episode
Show notes
What are your thoughts?
International Telecoms Week x Datacloud Africa 2026 Conference Podcast Edition
CEO Snehar Shah - iXAfrica Data Centres
The loudest thing at ITW 2026 isn’t a press release, it’s the reality that Nairobi is becoming a real contender in the global digital infrastructure conversation. We sit down on the conference floor to talk about what changed, what’s still missing, and what it actually takes to build a serious data center ecosystem in Kenya.
We dig into iX Africa’s third year in the market and the unglamorous work that makes a carrier neutral data center valuable: execution, interconnection density, and trusted delivery for enterprises. You’ll hear how connectivity partners, banks, and large local businesses translate “growth” into real workloads, plus why competition is healthy when it expands the whole market instead of shrinking it into a fight over the same slice.
Then we get into the topics everyone is debating across Africa’s data center industry: GPU hosting for AI workloads, sovereign AI demand, and what it means to be “government-ready” as cloud adoption accelerates. We also challenge the policy gap around critical infrastructure, the risks of regulation done wrong, and the sustainability arguments around power, water, and cooling solutions, with a strong reminder that Africa’s context is not the same as Europe or the US.
If you care about Nairobi data centers, Kenya digital infrastructure, cloud regions, data sovereignty, or the future of cross-border data flows in East Africa, this conversation brings the detail and the nuance.
Subscribe, share this with a builder in your network, and leave a review with the one policy change you think Kenya needs most.
Credits
Host:
Stella GichuhiProducer:
James NjorogeExecutive Producers:
Harry HareAgutu Dan
