Power outages and frequent fiber optic cable cuts have also made selling data center services harder mainly because clients want to pay lower prices, yet access services as provided in U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, telcos insist they have sufficient mechanisms to counter down-times.

"Safaricom is connected to the grid via Kenya Power and Lighting Company, has standby power generators and wind power in some of the stations to counter any outage," added Waita.

The need for data centers in the banking sector may have been required by the regulator, but there is no clarity whether the banks will open up and offer external cloud services to the public and compete with telcos. There is also no information whether the banks are willing to collocate with each other to offer more resilience.