The Treasury has proposed to allocate Sh5.2 billion to Konza Technopolis for the setup of a data centre and other facilities in the fiscal year beginning July, marking a 30-fold increase in allocation to the project compared to the current budget.
The allocation will rise from the Sh170 million apportioned in the current financial year.
In the projection, only Sh205 million will be billed to the taxpayer while the bulk of the financing amounting to Sh4.95 billion will be in the form of appropriations in aid.
Treasury has indicated that spending towards the project will ease in the subsequent years to Sh150 million during the period ending June 2026 and to Sh200 million in the succeeding year.
A data centre is a facility that centralises an organisation’s shared IT operations and equipment for the purposes of storing, processing and disseminating data and applications, thus helping businesses to organise large amounts of data remotely.
In the Kenyan market, notable names in this space are Africa Data Centres (ADC), Pan African IX Data Centres Kenya Limited (PAIX), IX Africa and icolo.io among others.
Once commissioned, the facility at Konza is expected to cater for the increasing demand for cloud computing services, digital transformation and edge computing applications across multiple sectors in the economy.
Among services that the centre will offer to both private players and government departments include Software as a Service (Saas), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well as Platform as a Service (PaaS).
