Olkaria

Olkaria is Kenya's primary geothermal field, located in the Rift Valley southwest of Nairobi near the town of Naivasha. It is operated by KenGen (Kenya Electricity Generating Company) and currently produces approximately 800 MW of installed geothermal capacity, making it one of Africa's largest geothermal complexes and a significant share of Kenya's total installed generation of roughly 3 GW. The field was designated the site of a $1 billion Microsoft-G42 data-centre campus, suspended by Kenya's government in early May 2026 when it became apparent that the full 1 GW target would draw a third of the country's entire installed generation capacity. The first-phase May 2026 construction target has now lapsed and no ground has been broken. Subsequent reporting has revealed a second obstacle: the Microsoft-G42 consortium requested that Kenya Power and Lighting Company provide a sovereign capacity-payment guarantee as an offtake backstop, which the government declined, reframing the suspension as a commercial dispute over who carries offtake risk, not solely a grid-capacity limit.

The field's appeal for data-centre siting was its combination of firm, non-intermittent geothermal power (unlike solar or wind, geothermal runs at high capacity factors year-round) and proximity to subsea cable landing stations on the Kenyan coast, providing Onward connectivity to Europe and the Gulf. Microsoft and G42 had positioned Olkaria as a proof-of-concept for African sovereign cloud infrastructure anchored on indigenous clean energy.

The suspension illustrates the structural problem of matching hyperscale compute demand with developing-nation energy supply. Kenya's aggregate installed capacity is comparable to a single mid-size US state; a 1 GW campus would instantly become the country's largest single electricity consumer by a large margin. President Ruto's characterisation that the full build would require switching off half the country is politically charged but mathematically grounded.