How Siscom is turning cloud infrastructure into a shared asset for Kenya’s tech revolution

In a sleek innovation hub tucked away in Nairobi’s Westlands, Kenya’s digital future is quietly getting a radical upgrade. Here, a bold new idea is taking root, one that doesn’t just ask Kenyans to use technology, but to own it. 

Siscom, a rising force in tech infrastructure, is flipping the script with its latest venture, Siscom Nodes, an initiative that allows everyday citizens to invest directly in the servers powering everything from social media and streaming to e-commerce and artificial intelligence.

“What if ordinary Kenyans could own a slice of the infrastructure powering social media, streaming, e-commerce, and even AI?” asks Derrick Gakuu, Siscom’s Chief of Strategy during an interview with Citizen Digital. The answer lies in Siscom Nodes, a platform that allows individuals, retail investors, private capital, family offices and even institutions like SACCOs and investment firms to invest from as little as $150 (about Ksh 20,000) to $15,000 in high-performance servers housed in Tier 3 data centers across Kenya. 

For years, Kenya’s “Silicon Savannah” has been celebrated for innovation, especially mobile money and a thriving startup ecosystem, but the country remains a net consumer of technology rather than a producer. The missing piece? Infrastructure.

“Kenya has an annual funding gap of $900 million in cloud infrastructure. That number is expected to hit $3 billion by 2030,” Gakuu explains. “The sad truth is that we’ve built amazing apps but never invested in the roads, the cloud, the compute, the clusters—that keep them running.”

This gap has real consequences. Startups in Kenya pay up to 60% more for cloud services than those in the U.S., China, or India, a disparity that the World Bank and International Finance Corporation say contributes to the high failure rate of African tech startups.

Siscom’s model flips the script by mobilizing local capital to build the digital backbone Africa needs. “We asked ourselves—what if cloud infrastructure could be crowd-owned?” says Nashon Mbithi, Siscom’s Partnerships Lead. “Just like you’d invest in a matatu on Uber or a rental apartment, you can now invest in compute clusters and earn from their usage.”

Investors buy into physical “nodes” that Siscom leases to startups, banks, AI labs, developers, and soon government AI initiatives. Returns come from leasing fees and are paid quarterly, much like traditional asset investments. Siscom handles all technical management, compliance, hosting, and demand sourcing.

“We make it easy. You don’t need to know how to manage a server. You just own it, like real estate. We do the heavy lifting,” Gakuu says.

The initiative arrives at a critical moment as Kenya grapples with data sovereignty concerns and government plans to create one million digital jobs. “America leads the digital world because it has over 5,000 data centers. Kenya has fewer than 20. If we don’t close that gap now, we’ll always be digital tenants, not landlords,” Gakuu warns.

Siscom estimates its model could generate 10,000 direct jobs in technical fields such as engineering and data analysis, and up to one million indirect jobs for developers, AI specialists, and creatives. It also promises to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into local tech productivity by lowering cloud costs.

Globally, investment in AI and digital infrastructure is surging. The IFC recently committed $100 million to African data center firm Raxio, while Microsoft and UAE-based G42 are investing $1 billion in a regional hyperscale data center in Kenya. But Siscom executives emphasize the importance of local ownership.

“This is about access and equity,” Mbithi says. “For the first time, a university student with Ksh 20,000 or a chama can co-own the tech powering fintech, e-learning, agri-tech—you name it.”

Looking ahead, Siscom is preparing to launch Kenya’s first locally owned GPU cluster, a specialized node designed for AI training and machine learning research. “We’re already seeing explosive demand from fintechs, health tech, and even creative AI platforms,” Gakuu says. “Our dream is to build an AI Factory, 100% locally funded, where Kenyan researchers don’t have to go abroad to build the future.”

The firm plans to onboard customers from fintech, e-commerce, government, AI research, and digital media sectors, while exploring additional edge nodes across East Africa.

Siscom’s bold vision is clear: Africa doesn’t need to be saved—it needs to be banked on. And for the first time, through investments as low as $150, Kenyans can bank on themselves by owning the cloud.