Africa Data Centres cements West Africa hub with Lagos datacentre
Africa Data Centres, the pan-African network of interconnected, carrier-and cloud-neutral datacentres and part of the Liquid Telecom Group, has confirmed a significant investment into the construction of a new 10MW datacentre facility in Lagos, Nigeria.
In May 2020 Strive Masiyiwa, Executive Chairman of the Liquid Telecom Group, said plans were “at an advanced stage” to enter West Africa and that the company had secured land “to build the largest datacentres in Ghana and Nigeria.”
Almost a year later, Stephane Duproz, CEO of Africa Data Centres, said construction of the datacentre is underway. “This region is hungry for digitisation and to pave the way for our hyperscale customers to deploy digitisation solutions to West Africa, Africa Data Centres’ construction of a 10-megawatt data centre in Lagos is well underway.
The Nigerian datacentre will form Africa Data Centres’ West African hub. The company’s datacentre network includes Johannesburg, Nairobi, Cape Town, Harare, and Kigali.
“Our expansion into Nigeria marks one aspect of the company’s growth on the continent,” said Duproz. “In response to demand generated by hyperscalers, key cloud operators and multinational enterprises already making use of our data centres, we have purchased the Samrand facility in South Africa and our key build in Midrand is under-way. These same clients, who have trusted us with their expansions into Kenya and other African territories, have expressed their interest in bringing digitisation at scale to West Africa. Our leadership and best practice in data centre operations have made us the obvious choice in their expansion strategies.”
Duproz added that multinational enterprises will want to be housed under the same roof as hyperscaler customers due to the lower latency enjoyed.
“As such, the combination of cloud providers and enterprises make these data centres marketplaces of the ecosystem – and, most importantly, the base for the country’s digital and economic development. Additionally, keeping African data on African soil is another key consideration driving the demand for local data centre facilities. We are proud to be ensuring that African data stays in Africa.”
Africa Data Centres believes the Lagos resource will spur the economy and create jobs.
“The stimulus effect to the economy of digitisation is well documented and Nigeria is ready for this technology boon. Furthermore, our construction policy is to uplift the community as far as possible, employing local contractors and creating work opportunities within the communities we enter – so the job creation opportunities are realised at both grass-roots and high-tech levels,” said Duproz.