Africa’s leading carrier-neutral co-location data centre provider, Africa Data Centres has announced plans to build large hyperscale data centres throughout Africa, including the North African countries of Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.
The project will involve building 10 hyperscale data centres, in 10 countries, over the next two years – at a cost of more than US$500m. It is being funded through new equity and facilities from leading development finance institutions and multilateral organisations.
Explaining the ambitious initiative, Africa Data Centres CEO, Mr Stephane Duproz said: “We have already begun to acquire land in these countries and plan to roll-out very quickly to meet the needs of our existing and new customers. This is just the beginning for us.”
The expansion will more than double Africa Data Centres’ already significant footprint on the continent.
Duproz said that the industries especially likely to be buoyed by Africa Data Centres’ expansion are the banking and growing fintech sectors, insurance and medical organisations, the public sector, hyperscale cloud providers and content providers.
These industries, he added, are highly sensitive to data speed, security, guaranteed uptime and are exacting when it comes to reliability and trust in their providers. The Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) market too, he said, has found a significant opportunity for growth by plugging into the digital ecosystems that data centres provide.