The next phase of Africa’s real estate growth may be less about which individual countries or cities are attracting capital, and more about what is connecting them.
From new trade routes and energy infrastructure to shifting global supply chains, rapid urbanisation and the growing demand for digital infrastructure, a series of structural changes is redrawing where economic activity is likely to concentrate across the continent and, with it, where the next generation of real estate opportunity may emerge.
These are among the findings set to underpin the Broll Africa Real Estate Intelligence Report 2026, which will be released at the API Summit in Cape Town this year, 17 & 18 September 2026.
Rather than treating African property markets as isolated national markets, the report takes a broader view of the forces shaping the continent’s development, identifying global mega-shifts and emerging growth corridors where these forces are beginning to converge.
The premise is significant: infrastructure, energy, trade, demographics and technology are increasingly creating economic ecosystems that cross conventional market boundaries. The resulting opportunity for real estate may therefore sit not only in established commercial centres, but along the corridors connecting ports, cities, industrial zones, energy projects, logistics hubs and emerging digital infrastructure.
The report’s analysis suggests that this is already visible in the market.
Across the African markets examined, infrastructure investment is creating new logistics hubs, industrial parks, free trade zones and mixed-use developments, while improvements in fibre connectivity and energy infrastructure are supporting the expansion of data centres and technology campuses.
From global mega-shifts to real estate opportunity
The Broll Africa Real Estate Report 2026 starts with four forces that are reshaping economies globally and increasingly influencing Africa’s development trajectory: demographic shifts; geopolitical realignment; the energy transition; and twin rise of digitisation and artificial intelligence.
Africa’s demographic trajectory remains one of the most powerful long-term drivers. Rapid population growth and urbanisation are expanding the pool of future consumers, workers, households and occupiers, while placing growing pressure on housing, transport, utilities and supporting infrastructure.
But demographics alone do not tell the investment story.
The report examines how demographic growth interacts with infrastructure, employment creation, trade and private-sector expansion - suggesting that investors may increasingly need to focus on where population growth is being supported by economic activity and connectivity, rather than population growth in isolation.
At the same time, geopolitical fragmentation and the diversification of global supply chains are creating opportunities for African markets positioned as alternative sources of energy and critical commodities. The energy transition is increasing demand for electricity and for minerals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese, while the accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence is creating a new infrastructure requirement of its own: reliable, affordable power and the data centres needed to support digital economies.
The implication for property markets is potentially profound. The infrastructure of the future economy is becoming inseparable from the real estate opportunity.
Six corridors where the forces converge
The report translates these global shifts into six identified growth corridors, examining how economic activity, infrastructure, energy, migration, logistics and investment could interact along each.
The corridors are assessed not simply according to what is being built today, but according to the economic forces that could shape their development over time.
This includes examining existing deal flow and economic activity, the infrastructure and resources driving growth, the potential impact across residential, industrial, logistics, hospitality and digital real estate, and the risks that could influence the trajectory of each corridor.
The research framework underpinning the report considers factors including legal and regulatory conditions, institutional capacity, local development capabilities, capital-market maturity, political stability and infrastructure quality, before considering potential future scenarios and the practical actions investors could take to position themselves.
It is this combination of opportunity and risk that distinguishes the report from a conventional market outlook.
The question is not simply where growth is expected. It is what is driving it, what could accelerate it, what could constrain it and what that means for real estate.
A market becoming increasingly differentiated
The report’s underlying market intelligence points to an African real estate landscape that is becoming considerably more nuanced.
While the continent continues to benefit from urbanisation, demographic growth, infrastructure investment, digital adoption and regional economic integration, investment conditions vary significantly between markets.
Capital is becoming increasingly selective, with investors favouring markets and assets capable of delivering resilient income growth, sustainable occupier demand and scalable development opportunities. The report points towards growing interest in strategic logistics corridors, university cities, established commercial centres and digital infrastructure hubs.
Malcolm Horne, Group CEO of Broll Property Group, said the changing investment landscape requires a different way of looking at African real estate.
“The opportunity in Africa has always been significant, but the way we understand that opportunity needs to evolve. Countries and cities remain important, but they are only part of the picture. Increasingly, the real story is in the connections - between energy and industry, ports and logistics, cities and migration, infrastructure and investment. This report is intended to connect those dots and provide a more informed view of where economic activity is likely to translate into real estate opportunity.”
That differentiation is already evident across individual sectors.
In office markets, for example, occupiers are increasingly favouring quality, consolidating into Grade A buildings that provide better operational efficiency, sustainability credentials and flexible configurations. South Africa remains the continent’s largest institutional office market, while Kenya has a significant future development pipeline. Yet the report also identifies Zambia as having one of the strongest current supply-demand balances among the markets surveyed.
Retail tells a different story. The research suggests that consumer market size does not automatically translate into stronger real estate performance. Tenant mix, affordability, competitive supply, shopping-centre quality and disciplined development are increasingly important determinants of performance.
And logistics is emerging as one of the clearest beneficiaries of the continent’s infrastructure and trade story.
The report identifies industrial and logistics real estate as one of Africa’s most resilient sectors, with future investment expected to concentrate around strategic logistics corridors, major ports and integrated industrial parks capable of supporting increasingly sophisticated supply chains.
The rise of the alternative real estate economy
Perhaps one of the most significant shifts identified in the research is the growing importance of asset classes outside traditional office and retail.
Data centres are emerging as a particularly compelling example.
Africa’s accelerating digitalisation, cloud adoption, fintech growth and artificial intelligence requirements are creating demand for new digital infrastructure. The report’s data shows approximately 80 MW of live commercial colocation capacity in South Africa and 15 MW in Kenya, while Kenya has a further 80 MW of announced pipeline capacity, compared with 60 MW in South Africa.
Purpose-built student accommodation presents another structural opportunity. Persistent undersupply and occupancy levels above 90% across most markets are expected to continue attracting institutional interest, particularly where large university populations intersect with rapidly growing cities.
Hospitality, meanwhile, reflects the relationship between real estate and broader economic activity. Business travel, mining, energy, infrastructure and financial services continue to underpin hotel demand, while Nigeria’s branded hotel pipeline of more than 9,000 rooms points to significant expectations for future corporate and leisure travel.
Taken together, these trends point towards a real estate market in which infrastructure, connectivity, operational quality and economic relevance are becoming increasingly important drivers of investment performance.
Following the capital - The $2.2bn question
A further layer of the Broll Africa Real Estate Intelligence Report 2026 is the US$2.2 billion API/Broll Deal Data Index, connecting the structural investment thesis to observed transaction activity.
This allows the report to move beyond asking where growth could happen to examining where capital is already moving and how those flows relate to the underlying economic and real estate fundamentals.
For investors, developers, financiers and occupiers, this provides a more practical lens through which to assess the continent: where the opportunity is emerging, which sectors are responding to it, and what risks may stand between potential and performance.
Murray Anderson, Managing Director of API Events, said the timing of the report reflects the changing nature of the African investment conversation.
“The African real estate conversation is becoming more sophisticated. Investors are looking beyond headline growth rates and asking harder questions about infrastructure, capital, connectivity, demand and risk. What makes this research particularly relevant is that it connects those questions. It gives the market a way to think about where growth is coming from, how it is travelling across the continent and what that means for the built environment.”
What the market should be watching next
The research provides an early indication of where some of these trends could lead.
Looking towards 2027, Broll’s analysis identifies data centres as potentially the fastest-moving real estate story, with major capacity expansion planned in Kenya and South Africa. Industrial and logistics assets are expected to remain among the most resilient commercial sectors, supported by regional trade integration and e-commerce. PBSA is expected to remain one of the most structurally undersupplied sectors, while hospitality will face an important test as new branded hotel supply comes online and markets assess whether current occupancy levels can be sustained.
But the growth of these alternative sectors will depend on more than underlying demand. It will increasingly depend on whether markets can create the policy, regulatory and capital-market conditions required to finance and scale these opportunities.
Broll’s analysis shows a clear relationship between capital-market depth and real estate-market sophistication. South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria have larger institutional investor pools capable of supporting REITs, infrastructure bonds and large-scale developments, while other markets remain more reliant on commercial banks, development finance institutions, foreign direct investment and sponsor equity.
The development of REIT markets illustrates this divergence. South Africa has 33 REITs with a combined market capitalisation of approximately US$20.9 billion, compared with three in Kenya and four in Nigeria. The report records no REITs across Uganda and Mozambique. While several African markets have introduced REIT legislation, limited liquidity, smaller institutional investor bases and low public awareness have constrained adoption.
This suggests that regulatory frameworks alone will not determine the next phase of real estate growth. The markets best positioned to capture emerging opportunities are likely to be those that can combine policy certainty and regulatory transparency with infrastructure investment, institutional participation and access to long-term domestic and international capital.
That becomes particularly important as alternative real estate becomes increasingly institutional. Data centres and PBSA are emerging as investment priorities, while infrastructure-led development is creating new demand for logistics, industrial, residential and hospitality assets around strategic transport, energy and digital infrastructure. Underlying all of these trends is therefore a broader shift in the investment proposition.
The report identifies quality over quantity, infrastructure-led growth, alternative real estate, sustainability, deeper capital markets and increasingly market-specific risk as structural themes likely to influence investment performance over the coming decade. For investors, this may mean moving away from broad country allocations towards a more granular understanding of specific cities, corridors, sectors and assets, and increasingly, the policy, infrastructure and capital ecosystems that make those opportunities investable.
Report to launch at API Summit
Broll Property Group is the exclusive Data & Research Partner to the API Summit, where the Broll Africa Real Estate Intelligence Report 2026 will be formally presented by Wayne Godwin, Managing Director of Broll Hospitality, on the morning of day one of API.
The launch will be followed by a fireside discussion unpacking the report’s findings and exploring some of the growth corridors and trends shaping multiple real estate asset classes across Africa.
The panel will feature:
- Malcolm Horne, Group CEO, Broll Property Group
- Hasnayn Ebrahim, Managing Director, Africa International Advisors
- Marinus van der Merwe, CEO, Fernridge Solutions
- Niyi Adeleye, Head of Real Estate Finance, Africa, Standard Bank Group
The discussion will examine what the data reveals about the forces reshaping Africa’s built environment, where opportunities are beginning to emerge, and what investors, financiers, developers and operators should be watching. The report has been produced by Broll Property Group, drawing on the expertise of its in-country research teams and specialist divisions, including Fernridge Solutions, Broll Valuations and Broll Capital Markets, with the research validated and enriched by Africa International Advisors. The underlying Broll market research draws on proprietary country-level intelligence as well as economic and population data from central banks, national statistical offices, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The Broll Africa Real Estate Intelligence Report 2026 will be unveiled at the API Summit in Cape Town.
