The Zimbabwe government says the country's National Datacentre project is almost complete and has urged investment by the industry.

Minister of ICT, Postal and Courier Service, Jenfan Muswere said the project is "95% complete" and added that while their economic value and contribution cannot be doubted, datacentres are generally overlooked by media and society.

Data Centre Africa Chairperson, Dunny Derera said agricultural-based countries that leverage data centre services have experienced greater production output and GDP growth.

"We are keen to work with the Zimbabwean government in the implementation of the national ICT policy and it is our view that we need to come up with home-grown solutions in addressing some of our challenges."

In 2018 Zimbabwe launched two datacentres in partnership with Huawei. As part of the first phase of a development deal between state-owned telecoms operator TelOne and Huawei, two new colocation and cloud facilities have been established. The first is located in the capital, Harare, and the second in an adjacent town called Mazoe.

Savannah Telecom plans to develop a true Tier IV specification datacentre that will house 250 cabinets.

This facility will have an annualised Power Utilisation Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.16 at full capacity and 1.3 at just 20% capacity.