(Image credit: Akos Stiller - Getty Images) Plans to build potentially the biggest, most expensive data centre in East Africa have stalled. Sources close to the matter say that talks between the Kenyan government and Microsoft have broken down due to disagreements over annual payments. Microsoft and its partners had wanted the Kenyan government to agree to pay annually for capacity, but sources say the government could not offer guarantees for the amount requested (via Bloomberg ). Microsoft president Brad Smith had previously pitched the data centre project as the “single biggest step to advance the availability of digital technology” in the country's history. The software and AI giant has been adding a gigawatt of data centre capacity about every three months in order to keep pace with global compute demand. Microsoft had partnered with G42—an AI company based in the United Arab Emirates—on the Kenya data centre, partly in a bid for the Abu Dhabi-based AI company to grow beyond its home market.…