Does Kenya require climate-resilient data centre design?
Not by name yet, but the Climate Change Act and National Adaptation Plan already apply to infrastructure generally. Heat, drought, flood and landslide risk should be screened into data centre siting and design the same way they are for roads and dams — the draft AI policy hasn't made that link explicit.
What climate screening would actually cover
Kenya's Climate Change Act (No. 11 of 2016, as amended 2023) and National Adaptation Plan already require climate risk to be considered in infrastructure planning. Nothing in current law exempts data centres — but nothing names them either, which means climate screening happens only if a developer or their consultant chooses to apply it.
| Climate risk | Design implication |
|---|---|
| Rising temperature trends | Cooling capacity sized for future, not historical, peak temperatures |
| Rainfall variability & drought | Water-sensitive cooling choice; drought contingency plan for water-dependent designs |
| Flood risk | Siting above flood return-period thresholds; drainage design for extreme events |
| Landslide-prone terrain | Geotechnical screening before site selection, not after |
The fix isn't a new law — it's an explicit clause connecting AI-enabling infrastructure to the climate-risk assessment already required elsewhere, so a proposed site's rainfall, flood and heat profile gets checked at the same stage as its grid connection, not after ground has been broken.