Infrastructure company Income is planning to invest around $280 million in a new data center near Alexandria, Egypt, Al Bayan newspaper has reported.

The project would be implemented in several phases and is expected to take three years to complete.

The Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy would initially provide 100MW, expected to rise to 400MW during future phases.

The facility would be located in Borg El Arab, a city 52km southwest of Alexandria, in the north of the country.

Al Bayan said the announcement follows talks about the project’s requirements between Egypt’s Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy, Mahmoud Esmat, and Hisham Sheta, Income’s chairman.

Esmat reportedly confirmed Egypt's grid capacity can meet the data center's power demand.

Giza-based Income is a subsidiary of the IGI group of companies with firms in the construction, real estate, development, industry and agricultural sectors.

Esmat and Sheta met in May to discuss “mechanisms for securing the energy needed to establish a global data center project in Egypt.”

The meeting, which took place at the Electricity Ministry’s headquarters in the New Capital, was attended by the executive chairman of the Egyptian Electric Utility and Consumer Protection Regulatory Agency, Ali Abdel Fattah.

During the meeting, Esmat reviewed the operational model of data centers and acknowledged the huge computing power required to process the growing volume of data generated and processed by technologies such as AI.

“The Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy is open to cooperation in this field and has a clear action plan to support localising the data center industry in line with the state’s vision and strategy for advanced technology localisation,” Esmat said.

Egypt’s national strategy for data centers and cloud computing aims to establish the country as a major digital and subsea cable hub bridging Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

Learn more about the data center market in MENA and meet with other executives and experts in the region at the DCN Riyadh event next year.