Kenya's ambition to become the green technology capital of the Global South took a monumental step forward with the finalization of a $1 billion investment by Microsoft and UAE-based AI firm G42.

Situated in the Olkaria geothermal fields of the Great Rift Valley, the flagship datacenter campus is powered 100% by clean, subterranean geothermal steam, insulating energy-intensive AI training workloads from carbon emissions and power grid unreliability.

The campus will anchor Microsoft's East Africa Azure Cloud Region and includes an East Africa Innovation Hub providing free computing time to researchers from the University of Nairobi, Strathmore, and regional agricultural institutes.

Kenyan President William Ruto hailed the facility as proof that Africa's climate and renewable energy assets can attract the most sophisticated tier of global digital infrastructure investment.