Google Pumps $2B into Africa’s Biggest Wind Power Project

So in the end it is a chicken/egg problem - no communication structure because there is nothing to transmit.

No datacenter because there is no communications.

But I've also read that mobile banking is MASSIVE in africa, more than the entire rest of the world combined.

Plus Africa is extremely diverse, I suspect there must be several cities that could benefit from a google datacenter.

mostly true, but there is at least some undersea cable infrastructure to and between the countries. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WACS_(cable_system) as an example. Bottlenecks tend to be within countries where fibre is often not built out further than the capitals, especially in the poorest ones like Guinea and Sierra Leone, where I was working on networks this year. On the other hand, Cote D'Ivoire has a very good infrasructure, and internet is much more accessible than elsewhere. I believe Senegal, the digital powerhouse of the West Africa region, at least, has the same. But much internet is still only point-to-point microwave if you're lucky (and that supports telephone and mobile data communication backbones too), or VSAT, if you're not.

Well, if you were going to attempt to invoke a super-intelligent being then a data-center in Africa might be just the right place to do it.

Political stability is also a potential issue. If you're putting K-hundred-million dollars into a top-rate data center, risks associated with political instability become hard to stomach. Kenya is a great place to work, and quite open to outside investment, but had major problems two elections back, a scare at the last election, and ongoing problems with al-shabab. One of the best places to work in SSA, and still doesn't feel all that stable.

That infographic left out Alaska, Canada and Mexico.

USA is 10,000 square KM and Africa is 30,000 sq KM

http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html

But it's not $2 billion into that specific wind project, as the title implies.