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Africa Compute Tracker

Cosmas Data City Cape Town Campus

Also known as CDC Cape Town, Cavaleros CDC Cape Town, Cavaleros Group Cape Town DC1

Status
Announced
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Operator
Cavaleros Group
IT load
Not disclosed
Expected online
1 January 2027
Last verified

Why this matters

Editorial assessment by the maintainer, not a sourced fact. Full analysis below.

Overview

This record replaces the provisional cavaleros-cape-town-dc1 identity. Cavaleros' operator statement identifies the project as the CDC Cape Town campus, part of the Cosmas Data City campus programme.

The operator statement describes CDC Cape Town as a 100-hectare development with over 360MVA of power availability. Daily Maverick reports the Cape Town project as 360MW and places it within a broader set of four Cape Town data-centre developments totalling 580MW of reported demand.

The Microsoft link remains unconfirmed. Do not cite Microsoft as a tenant or anchor customer unless a primary source confirms it.

The Cavaleros LinkedIn evidence is also preserved as a local text snapshot in data/sources/2026-Cavaleros-Cosmas-Data-City-LinkedIn.md because social posts can be difficult to retrieve reproducibly.

Capacity

What IT load means
IT load — current
0 MW
No operational load is disclosed; the campus is tracked as announced rather than operational.
estimated Source [s1] Source [s2]
Total facility power
360 MW
Daily Maverick reports 360MW; Cavaleros reports over 360MVA power availability. Stored as MW-equivalent pending schema support for MVA.
reported Source [s1] Source [s2]
Land area
100 ha
reported Source [s2]

Infrastructure

Tier certification explained
Tier certification
UNKNOWN
Connectivity
Existing availability zones
reported Source [s2]
AI cooling readiness
Not assessed

Cooling adequacy for AI workloads has not been independently assessed for this facility.

AI racks draw around 100 kW each, about ten times a conventional rack, so rack-level liquid cooling is the key differentiator. Training versus inference

Power

PPAs and wheeling
Grid utility
City of Cape Town
Grid carbon intensity
900 g CO₂/kWh
City of Cape Town supply is ultimately Eskom-backed for large grid loads; grid-level figure, not facility-specific.
estimated Source [s1]

Grid carbon in context

900 g CO₂/kWh: very high — coal-heavy grid. That is 2.1 times the global average of 436 g (IEA, 2022). For comparison, France is about 60, the UK about 175 and the US about 400.

Grid-level estimate. PPAs and on-site renewables may lower the effective footprint.

Water

Water stress explained
Water source
Not disclosed
Water stress (WRI)
High

Governance

Data residency explained
Jurisdiction
South Africa

Workloads

Training versus inference
  • General cloud
  • Colocation

Cavaleros describes the CDC campuses as hyperscale-capable infrastructure for cloud, AI, Neo Cloud, and enterprise deployments. No reviewed source confirms a specific AI tenant, GPU cluster, or live AI training deployment for the Cape Town campus.

Claims

How claims work

Claims are contested or still-evolving assertions, kept apart from sourced facts. A disputed claim is not a confirmed fact.

c1 Anchor tenant Microsoft
disputed

Denial status: Unaddressed by parties

Daily Maverick reports that the 360MW Cape Town project is thought to be linked to Microsoft, while also stating that neither Cavaleros nor Microsoft has confirmed or denied the link.

First observed 2026-04-28 last reviewed 2026-06-29
Source [s1]
c2 Other
reported

Operator-supplied LinkedIn text describes the Cape Town campus as positioned within existing availability zones and supported by over 360MVA of power availability.

First observed 2026-06-29 last reviewed 2026-06-29
Source [s2]

Constraints

Grid capacity high

Daily Maverick reports the Cape Town project as 360MW; the Cavaleros operator statement describes over 360MVA power availability. Either figure is material relative to Cape Town's reported 1,676MW maximum electricity demand.

Source [s1]Source [s2]
Water stress high

Daily Maverick raises unresolved questions about water demand for new Cape Town data centres, and no reviewed Cavaleros source discloses cooling technology, water source, or projected consumption.

Source [s1]

Editorial assessment

high significance

This section is the maintainer's interpretation, not a sourced claim. Assessed by project-maintainer on 2026-06-29.

If built as announced, the CDC Cape Town Campus would be one of Cape Town's largest data-centre developments and a major power-ready hyperscale campus in South Africa's Western Cape cloud market.

Sources

How sources are ranked
  1. [s1]
    New data centres set to swallow 34% of Cape Town's current electricity supply, Daily Maverick

    local journalism Retrieved 29 June 2026 Not yet archived

  2. [s2]
    The Cavaleros Group Announces Major Data Centre Campus Developments in Partnership with Knight Frank and Future-Tech, Cavaleros Group LinkedIn

    social media Retrieved 29 June 2026 Not yet archived

What these source types mean
local journalism
Local news outlets; variable editorial standards, used for leads and corroboration.
social media
LinkedIn posts, job listings, tweets — lowest trust, used only as a lead.