The Presidents of Kenya and Finland launched the AI Middle Powers Initiative at the United Nations in September 2026. It is a voluntary, practical framework for turning shared sovereignty into shared capability. Its first deep dive meets in Freetown on 17–18 November, on infrastructure: three African corridors, each pairing clean energy with computing that middle powers can buy.
Srisailam Dam spillway, India · Stand-in, not the Betmai site · Photo: Construction Review Online, All rights reserved
CPA · Indicative terms2.1
West Africa · Sierra Leone
Betmai28.2 MW
Proposal · term sheet in preparation
TermTen years, with a price reopener at year five
PriceIndexed to a public compute benchmark, with a floor that services the debt
Buyer
CPA
Host
Next: Freetown17–18 Nov 2026
Co-chairs Republic of Kenya · Republic of Finland. Partners Minderoo Foundation, Project Liberty Institute, United Nations Foundation, Open Society Foundations, AfCEN
African infrastructure projects reaches financial close
McKinsey & Company, 2020
§1The initiative
Shared sovereignty, shared capability
No middle power can build every layer of artificial intelligence alone, and none wants to depend on a handful of suppliers for all of it. The initiative pools capability where scale matters. Each country keeps control of what must stay at home.
The co-chairs and participating governments set the initiative's direction and decide on what each deep dive brings forward.
Republic of KenyaCo-chairs
Republic of FinlandCo-chairs
Deep dives
Working sessions, region by region
Working-level stations turn the initiative's three questions into projects. Freetown hosts the first, on infrastructure, and Nairobi follows in December.
Freetown17–18 Nov 2026Next
Nairobi14–18 Dec 2026Planned
Three questions
What each participant brings, and what Africa's infrastructure answers
At the leaders' roundtable in New York on 21 September 2026, each participant was asked what it can contribute, which dependency it wants to reduce, and how it will cooperate.
Energy, land and grid at the source
Hydro, geothermal and solar sites with room to grow, a young workforce, and projects prepared to a standard that lenders can read and trust.
Waiting for a buyer
African demand for computing is growing, but slowly. A plant built only for today's local demand does not get financed, so the capacity never arrives for the demand to grow into.
Buy part of it from Africa
A middle power already buying a decade of computing places a share of it at an African site under a ten-year Compute Purchase Agreement. No new money is asked for. The signature does the work.
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Contribute
Energy and compute
Energy flows to the compute campus. The buyers' ten-year purchase commitment flows back to the plant, and that signature is what makes it bankable.
PlantCompute campus
Energy →← ten-year purchase commitment
CPABuyer · Host
1.1 · Pillar
Financing
Mobilising the capital that AI infrastructure needs, on terms middle powers can carry.
1.2 · Pillar
Trusted infrastructure
Energy, computing and data systems that participating countries can rely on and govern under their own law.
1.3 · Pillar
Human and institutional capacity
The people and institutions needed to build AI, run it and govern it.
2009
The undersea cables reached Mombasa ahead of the traffic, because buyers signed for capacity before it existed. Demand grew into it. The same rule can work for compute.
Mombasa
§2Three corridors
Three rivers, one contract template
Each corridor pairs a hydro project in West, East or Southern Africa with a compute campus sized to its first contract. All three use the same contract template, so a buyer's lawyers only have to read it once.
NoteThe corridor projects on this page are proposals in preparation. Nothing is agreed with any government, project owner or buyer until it is in writing.
W · 2.1 · West Africa · Sierra Leone
Betmai
28.2 MWPampana RiverProposal · term sheet in preparation
The first contract on the table. A run-of-river hydro plant at Betmai Falls, near the northern mining hub and on the transmission route to Freetown. A compute campus takes a share of its output under a ten-year contract, and the rest strengthens the national grid.
Plant
Betmai run-of-river hydro
Capacity
28.2 MW under the amended agreement ratified by Parliament in October 2023
Output
About 132 GWh a year expected
Data
The buyer's own law governs its data from day one. A data-embassy upgrade follows once Sierra Leone's Data Protection Act is in force.
Next: Freetown · 17–18 Nov 2026
Stand-in for Betmai, not the site
E · 2.2 · East Africa · Kenya
Nyamindi
5 MWNyamindi River · KirinyagaProposal · study stage
A hydro cascade on the slopes of Mount Kenya with a completed feasibility study, held back while Kenya paused new power purchase agreements. A compute buyer can be the long-term offtaker the grid could not be, with a small campus sized to the plant beside it.
Plant
Nyamindi Cascade hydro, first section
Studied
5 MW, feasibility study completed in 2017
Offtake
Compute campus next to the plant, under a ten-year purchase agreement
Data
Kenya's Data Protection Act (2019) and an independent regulator make this the corridor best placed to host sensitive workloads first.
Next: Nairobi · IGF · 14–18 Dec 2026
S · 2.3 · Southern Africa · Mozambique
Zambezi
2,075 MWZambezi River · Tete to MaputoProposal · scoping
Two speeds. A first campus runs on power that already flows from Cahora Bassa. A buyer's option is written into the offtake plans for Mphanda Nkuwa now, so the signature arrives years before the plant does.
Operating
Cahora Bassa hydro 2,075 MW
Planned
Mphanda Nkuwa hydro 1,500 MW, operation targeted for 2034
Regional link
Southern African Power Pool
Data
The buyer's own law governs its data, held under a contractual residency clause.
Next: station to be proposed · 2027
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§3Freetown deep dive · 17–18 November 2026
Hardware, capital and rules on one table
The initiative's infrastructure deep dive meets at the West Africa Integration and Investment Summit. Sierra Leone brings all three layers at once, which is why the first contract starts in Freetown. Hardware without rules cannot hold sensitive data. Rules without hardware stay on paper. And neither gets financed until a buyer signs.
Freetown and its harbour from the air · Photo: David Hond, CC BY 2.0
#1Rules
Data embassy
Sierra Leone is designing a data embassy: its most important state records mirrored abroad under the law of a partner that already protects them, and later a shared node with its neighbours. The Data Protection Bill sets the timetable, and the policy framework is launched at the Summit.
Policy launch · the law decides when sensitive data can move
#2Capital
Deal Room
Two kinds of capital meet in the Summit's Deal Room. Development finance comes through the AI 10 Billion initiative of the African Development Bank and UNDP, whose Secretariat holds its sessions in Freetown the same week. Purchase commitments come from middle-power buyers, and they are what make the plant bankable.
Investment platform · commitments recorded in one register
#3Hardware
Energy and compute
Betmai hydro and a compute campus sized to its first contract. Investors own the plant and the machines, and the ten-year purchase agreement pays for them. Sierra Leone keeps the grid gains and the capacity to grow into.
28.2 MW hydro · phase-one campus · ten-year CPA
§4The programme in Freetown · 11–18 November 2026
A week from first scoping to a tabled term sheet
The working group starts in the pre-summit week and reaches the leaders on the Summit's two main days, Opportunity Day and Deal Day. The AI 10 Billion sessions run alongside. Open sessions can be joined in Freetown or online, and the main moments are streamed live.
In Freetown delegates on siteOnline join and take partLivestream watch live
Corridor teams and buyer-side delegations scope one project each, covering the energy, the computing, the demand and the finance.
The first stage of the AI 10 Billion country cycle. The ministry and lenders review Sierra Leone's country analysis and prepare the Deal Room.
§5The contract
The Compute Purchase Agreement
Power purchase agreements made power plants bankable. A utility signed to buy the electricity, and the finance followed. The CPA applies the same logic to computing: a creditworthy buyer commits to ten years of capacity from a named African site. The buyer gets clean, long-term capacity at an indexed price, outside the most congested markets. The host gets a financed plant, a grid that reaches further, and computing capacity its own economy can grow into.
Register for the working group and the open sessions. Delegates in Freetown can take part in every open session. Online participants join the working group and the pre-summit sessions, and the main moments are streamed live. If you can, bring one scoped project: the energy, the computing, the demand and the finance.
01Middle-power governments with computing needs over the next decade
02Sovereign cloud and compute procurement agencies
Freetown and its harbour from the air · Photo: David Hond, CC BY 2.0
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