Kenyan carrier neutral data centre provider Icolo has broken ground on a new 27,000sqft data centre in Nairobi, which will provide 800KW of IT load to customers.

The Kenya-based Icolo designs, builds and operates data centres, serving telecom carriers, ISPs and peering points, IT and cloud providers, content providers, and enterprise and financial services customers.

Building has begun at the company's new Nairobi site, which will be completed in two phases and be able to provide 268 cabinets for customer use with up to 800KW of available IT power.

The data centre is a purpose-built building spanning over 27,000sqft of built-up area with redundant power, complete with its own backup generators, precision cooling and pre-cabled inter connect infrastructure.

The first phase of building will be completed in May next year, with construction on the second phase starting later in the year.

"With the unparalleled growth in the internet and the explosion of digital data in Kenya, we are very excited to build a truly carrier neutral data center in the heart of the African digital economy. With our new data center, we are able to offer redundancy, reliability, choice of connectivity partners and flexibility to our colocation customers," said Ranjith Cherickel, Icolo founder and CEO.

The open access data centre will provide colocation services such as rack space, power, cooling and physical security, as well as remote hand services and high level technical support to our customers.

Icolo's aim is to serve major businesses in the East African region, with Cherickel saying the data centre in Nairobi would form an important part of the infrastructure required to provide scalable and reliable solutions to enterprise and cloud customers planning their next major deployments in Africa.

Most major Kenya-based ISPs have already committed to providing connectivity to the Nairobi site.

The company announced last year the construction of their Mombasa One data centre (MBA1), which will be customer ready in March of next year and is the first carrier neutral data centre in Mombasa.

It is hoped this will make it an attractive location for international carriers to interconnect with the region as new and existing undersea cables connect through to the port city.

"With the combination of a carrier neutral facility and the undersea cables, Mombasa will fast become the gateway to Africa for all the international carriers and cloud players looking to build infrastructure in Africa," said Cherickel.