South African IT spending will grow 19.8% in 2026 to US$28.1-billion, more than five percentage points faster than the global figure, according to figures Gartner provided to TechCentral.
The research firm does not publish a South African breakdown with its quarterly global releases. It supplied the local cut on request, following its worldwide forecast on 27 July, which raised expected 2026 IT spending to $6.37-trillion and growth to 14.2%.
Local spending was $23.45-billion in 2025. At the exchange rate at the time of publication of R16.81 to the dollar, the 2026 figure works out to roughly R472-billion. Gartner forecasts in dollars, so the rand figure is an indicative conversion that will move with the currency.
The local forecast comes at the end of a sustained run of upward revisions by Gartner to forecasted global IT spending, each larger than the last:
- October 2025: $6.08-trillion, growth of 9.8%, the first time the firm put worldwide IT spending above $6-trillion
- February 2026: $6.15-trillion, growth of 10.8%
- April 2026: $6.31-trillion, growth of 13.5%
- July 2026: $6.37-trillion, growth of 14.2%
In nine months, the projected growth rate has moved from 9.8% to 14.2% and the dollar total has climbed by about $290-billion. Data centre spending has been repeatedly underestimated: as recently as April, Gartner put the segment at $788-billion and 55.8% growth. It now has it at $822-billion and 62.5%.
Read: SA puts data centres on par with energy, ports in big policy shift
“Building the compute capacity required for AI is the largest infrastructure project ever attempted by humanity,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “Driven by the expansion of AI workloads and demand for high-performance computing, hyperscalers and enterprises are rapidly scaling next-generation data centre capacity.”
One caveat for anyone comparing quarters: Gartner split the previously combined “IT services” line into services and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in July, so that row is not comparable with April.
What the South African numbers show
| Segment | 2025 | 2026 | Growth | Global growth |
| Communications services | $7 847m | $8 911m | 13.6% | 4.4% |
| Software | $5 325m | $6 618m | 24.3% | 15.5% |
| Services | $4 787m | $5 474m | 14.4% | 5.3% |
| Devices | $4 056m | $4 573m | 12.7% | 9.8% |
| Data centre systems | $1 088m | $2 074m | 90.6% | 62.5% |
| IaaS | $344m | $436m | 26.7% | 29.3% |
| Total | $23 447m | $28 085m | 19.8% | 14.2% |
Source: Gartner (July 2026). Growth rates calculated by TechCentral from Gartner’s spending figures
Three things stand out:
- The first is data centre systems, which Gartner expects to nearly double, from $1.09-billion to $2.07-billion, growth of 90.6% against 62.5% globally. That is off a small base, and still leaves the segment at 7.4% of South African IT spend against 12.9% worldwide. But it is the clearest number yet on how much of the AI buildout is being felt locally.
- The second is how weighted the market remains to telecoms. Communications services is still the largest local category at $8.91-billion, or 31.7% of IT spend, against 21.3% worldwide, and it is growing at 13.6% versus 4.4% globally, the slowest-growing category in Gartner’s world table.
- The third is where South Africa lags. IaaS is forecast to grow 26.7% locally against 29.3% globally, and at $436-million accounts for just 1.6% of local spend against 4.5% worldwide. South Africa is buying the servers faster than the world. It is buying the cloud capacity that runs on top of them more slowly.
South Africa is expected to account for about 0.44% of worldwide IT spending in 2026, up from 0.42%.
Regional view is more sober
The continental picture is more sober. Figures from T4i, the Africa-focused advisory firm founded by Mark Walker after three decades at International Data Corp, put sub-Saharan African ICT spending at $108-billion in 2026, rising to $143.1-billion by 2030 – a compound annual growth rate of 7.3%.
| SSA ICT spend ($bn) | 2026 | 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | CAGR |
| AI-specific | 1.7 | 2.3 | 3.2 | 4.5 | 6.3 | 38.7% |
| Traditional (non-AI) | 106.3 | 113.2 | 120.6 | 128.4 | 136.8 | 6.5% |
| Total | 108 | 115.5 | 123.8 | 132.9 | 143.1 | 7.3% |
Source: T4i
AI-specific spending grows fastest by far, at 38.7% a year, but from a very small base. It is 1.6% of regional ICT spending in 2026 and still only 4.4% by 2030. Of the $35.1-billion the region adds over the period, AI accounts for $4.6-billion; the rest is traditional ICT growing at 6.5%.
The two datasets are not directly comparable: T4i measures ICT across sub-Saharan Africa over five years, Gartner IT in South Africa over one. But read together they suggest a sharp near-term spike concentrated in the region’s largest economy rather than a broad continental repricing.
Walker points to a long list of constraints: financing costs, regulation and taxation, water, connectivity, talent, and electricity. He also cites “socio-cultural friction due to unemployment concerns”, limited local language and content capability, and the disruption of business process outsourcing, call centre and some manufacturing sectors by agentic AI.
Spending up, shipments down
A significant share of the increase is cost, not capability, and Gartner has been explicit about it.
The firm estimates a 130% surge in combined DRAM and SSD prices by the end of 2026, raising PC prices 17% and smartphone prices 13% against 2025 levels. The consequence is that worldwide PC shipments will fall 10.4% this year and smartphone shipments 8.4%, even as spending on devices rises.
Read: Memory crisis sends smartphone market into steep decline
“This is the lowest level of device shipments witnessed in over a decade,” said Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner. “Higher prices will narrow the range of devices available, prompting buyers to hold on to devices for longer, fundamentally altering upgrade cycles.”
PC memory costs are expected to peak at 23% of the total bill of materials, up from 16% in 2025. “This sharp increase removes vendors’ ability to absorb costs, making low-margin entry-level laptops non-viable,” Atwal said. “Ultimately, we expect the sub-$500 entry-level PC segment will disappear by 2028.”
Gartner has South African device spending rising 12.7%, but globally it expects people to buy fewer machines, not more. In a market that imports almost all its hardware and pays for software and cloud in dollars, a bigger IT bill does not mean more technology.
Not a rising tide
Gartner says the boom is not lifting everything. “Despite the strong growth in spending, this is not a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats market trend,” Lovelock said. “Technology budgets are being strained by inflation, supply shortages, rising hardware and memory costs, AI funding initiatives and shifting priorities.”
That divergence has already drawn blood. IBM’s shares fell 25% on 14 July after CEO Arvind Krishna told investors the company had not anticipated “the magnitude of the capex reprioritisation” as clients shifted spend towards servers, storage and memory. Microsoft, ServiceNow, Salesforce and Intuit fell in sympathy.
Read: IBM shares crash 25% as AI upends software spending
Gartner updates the forecast every quarter. On the pattern of the past four, the question is less whether the number moves than by how much. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
