South Africa · The Next Hotspot

Where the racks actually land.

South Africa is the continental anchor. Johannesburg’s Gauteng cluster holds the bulk of live capacity, with Cape Town and Durban on the coast where the cables come ashore. Each glowing node is a real site, colour-coded by what it is – verified live or in build, announced, or a contested early-stage megaproject. Open one for the detail, filter by region, and toggle the cable landings and the grid constraint. The mountain enclave in the east is Lesotho, where a US$6.2bn hydropower-and-AI deal now sits inside South Africa’s grid. The outline follows real national boundary data and every site sits on its true coordinates.

Eskom fixed the generation. The wires are the new ceiling.

The grid that defined South African risk has steadied. By mid-2026 the country had passed more than 400 consecutive days without load shedding, the longest stretch in a decade, after Eskom’s Generation Recovery Plan lifted the fleet’s energy-availability factor back toward the mid-60s from a 2023 low near 55 per cent. Average unplanned outages fell by roughly 3,500 MW year-on-year, the equivalent of returning a major station to service, and diesel spend on emergency turbines collapsed from R4.7 billion to under R750 million over the comparable period.

The constraint has moved from generation to transmission. The grid was built last century to push coal one way, from Mpumalanga to the metros, and it cannot evacuate the solar of the Northern Cape or the wind of the Cape coasts: more than 70 GW of advanced renewable projects sit behind saturated corridors. The newly unbundled National Transmission Company plans 14,450 kilometres of new line by 2034 at around R440 billion, but built only 108 of a 423-kilometre target in the last financial year. Until those wires arrive, wheeling clean power to a data centre stays capped by physics, not permits.

400+ days

Without load shedding, to mid-2026

~64%

Eskom availability factor (55% in 2023)

70 GW+

Advanced renewables behind the grid

R440bn

Transmission build to 2034 (14,450 km)

Verified and announced · Eskom, NTCSA and National Treasury, 2025 to 2026

Set aside load shedding and water. Ask whether the road is a road.

Heath Andersen takes the two things outsiders assume about African data centres and puts both down. South Africa does not have a power shortage; it has a transmission and distribution problem. And water is not the constraint people expect, because the facilities he works on are air cooled and achieving good PUEs at elevation on fresh air. What actually decides whether a project succeeds is far less exotic: whether the road and the cable on the map exist on the ground, whether customs will release your equipment, and whether you can keep the people you trained. Seven files, closing on a forecast that runs against the rest of this report. Open any file for the read. His material on the rest of the continent, on grid connection by country, ports and the operations gap, sits in Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.

Heath Andersen

Mechanical engineer and data centre project director · DCDesign.Africa

Site and delivery Air cooling Operations

Contributed analysis, produced from a live interview with Heath Andersen, twelve questions. Nothing on this page is a verbatim quotation. The text is the desk’s account of what he said, written up from notes rather than transcribed, and his phrasings appear as reported speech for that reason. All seven findings are graded Contributed; the transmission and distribution point is independently checkable against South African grid data and may be upgraded. He is asked in the interview about a specific public objection to a named operator; that passage is held back pending independent verification and is not published here.

Source document · annotated

State of the Nation Address 2026: the digital-infrastructure passage

Cape Town City Hall · 12 February 2026 · public record

Public
record

01On the digital economy, the President told Parliament that the country is attracting major investment in digital infrastructure1.

02He stated that 55 data centres have already been built2 in South Africa.

03And that more than R50 billion in investment is expected over the next three years3.

04The year before, he had described the country as a “reservoir” for data centres4.

05New public-private partnership rules, he said, would reduce risk and fast-track projects in energy, water, transport and digital infrastructure5.

5 claims marked · 2 verified · 2 announced · 1 disputedMethod: claim by claim against the public record

Analysis · Entelligencia read

Click a row to locate it in the text, or a claim to locate its analysis.

Verifiedline 01 · ref 1

Independently checkable. Entelligencia counts around 56 live facilities, and South Africa leads Africa by operational capacity.

Verifiedline 02 · ref 2

Portfolio analyses put the count near 56, consistent with the 55 cited.

Announcedline 03 · ref 3

A three-year forward expectation, not built capital. Treat as pipeline.

Framingline 04 · ref 4

Rhetoric from SONA 2025, and the right image. What fills it is dependable power.

Watchline 05 · ref 5

The enablers depend on transmission reform that is partial and disputed. See finding 06.

Source document · annotated

Eskom revised unbundling strategy: ministerial approval

Statement · 9 December 2025 · Eskom Holdings

Company
statement

01In December 2025 the minister approved a revised unbundling strategy for Eskom1.

02Under it, transmission assets remain owned by the NTCSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eskom Holdings2.

03Advisers had warned that immediate full separation could trigger a cross-default on about R400 billion of Eskom debt3.

04A fully independent transmission operator, established outside Eskom, remains the stated end-state4.

05Eskom described the chosen path as the “fastest and most orderly transition”5.

5 claims marked · 1 verified · 3 announced · 1 disputedMethod: claim by claim against the public record

Analysis · Entelligencia read

Click a row to locate it in the text, or a claim to locate its analysis.

Announcedline 01 · ref 1

Approval is a decision, not a completed restructure. It sets the shape of the next phase, not its delivery.

Contestedline 02 · ref 2

The contested core. Keeping transmission inside Eskom is read by critics as a conflict of interest in a market where Eskom also generates. See finding 06.

Verifiedline 03 · ref 3

The R400 billion cross-default risk is the real constraint behind the choice, on the record in Eskom statements and Business Day.

Announcedline 04 · ref 4

The ERAA still requires a fully independent operator within five years. The NTCSA was legally separated as a subsidiary in 2024; independence is the unfinished step.

Framingline 05 · ref 5

Eskom frames the slower route as orderly. Whether it is orderly or simply slower is exactly the debate.

Source document · annotated

NERSA awards the NTCSA a Market Operator Licence

Statement · 27 November 2025 · Eskom Holdings

Company
statement

01NERSA awarded a Market Operator Licence to the NTCSA1.

02Eskom called it the “next step” to a competitive electricity market2.

03The ERAA mandates a fully independent system operator within five years3.

04In the meantime the NTCSA will temporarily fulfil certain TSO roles4.

05The Market Code still needs finalisation and NERSA approval5.

5 claims marked · 1 verified · 3 announced · 1 disputedMethod: claim by claim against the public record

Analysis · Entelligencia read

Click a row to locate it in the text, or a claim to locate its analysis.

Verifiedline 01 · ref 1

The licence is real and dated. It is the regulatory permission to run a market, the institutional half of the reform that wheeling depends on.

Announcedline 02 · ref 2

A “next step”, in Eskom's own framing. Competition is the destination, not the present state.

Announcedline 03 · ref 3

Five years is the legal clock. The same end-state the unbundling document sets out, now with a statutory deadline attached.

Contestedline 04 · ref 4

“Temporarily” doing the operator's job is exactly the conflict critics name: the market operator and a generator sit, for now, inside one group. See finding 06.

Watchline 05 · ref 5

No approved Market Code, no trading rules. The licence opens the door; the Code is the door still being built.

Source documents · annotated

The wheeling framework: how self-supply reaches the halls

COGTA framework, July 2025 · Eskom Gen-wheeling tariff · policy note

Policy and
tariff

01Wheeling delivers power from a generator to a buyer across networks owned by others1.

02ERA amendments let private generators sell directly to private off-takers, ending the single-buyer market2.

03Projects under 100 MW are licence-exempt but must register with NERSA3.

04Crucially, wheeling does not shield a customer from load-shedding4.

05And siting is limited by grid capacity, while the transmission plan still faces fundraising hurdles5.

5 claims marked · 4 verified · 1 disputedMethod: claim by claim against the public record

Analysis · Entelligencia read

Click a row to locate it in the text, or a claim to locate its analysis.

Verifiedline 01 · ref 1

The legal definition, in Eskom's own tariff book. Wheeling is a contract and an accounting mechanism, not a private wire. The electrons mix on the grid.

Verifiedline 02 · ref 2

The 2021 and 2022 ERA amendments are why finding 03 is possible: an operator can own generation and sell it to itself, across the grid.

Verifiedline 03 · ref 3

The 100 MW exemption took the regulatory brake off self-build. Registration, not a full generation licence, is the bar for most projects.

Verifiedline 04 · ref 4

The point operators learn the hard way. A wheeled PPA credits your bill; it does not keep your halls lit when the system sheds load. Only on-site generation or storage does that.

Watchline 05 · ref 5

Where you can wheel depends on spare grid capacity, and the plan to add it is not fully funded. This is finding 06, seen from the project side.