Africa’s data centre industry is booming, yet it faces a severe talent crisis. The market is young, training is inaccessible, and most available courses are either unaffordable, irrelevant to Africa, or lack local certification. Existing recruitment models often lead to poaching and recycling the same limited talent pool.

Young people across the continent are eager for opportunity, but the bridges between them and these high-growth industries are broken. As digital infrastructure accelerates, the urgency for workforce development becomes critical.

In response to Africa’s growing digital infrastructure demands and the widening talent gap in the data centre (DC) sector, a new ground-breaking initiative is being launched to develop a local and future-ready workforce for the continent. This pioneering project, born out of a collaboration between industry experts, training providers, and placement specialists, will build Africa’s first scalable data centre talent pool, sourced, trained, certified, and placed in jobs.

The Africa Data Centre Talent Project aims to build a training and placement model that addresses:

• Awareness: Educating youth about the digital infrastructure sector
• Access: Affordable, blended learning with regional support
• Alignment: Matching skills to actual job roles and industry standards
• Pathways: Structured pipelines from training to employment to growth
• African need: growing a talent pool for DCs that works for Africa

Join the Data Centre Africa Skills Study and make sure your voice helps shape the future of the industry. By completing the survey, you’ll get early access to industry-wide results and insights, plus a direct line to the future talent pool.