Hardy Pemhiwa, president and group CEO of Cassava Technologies.

Africa not only belongs at the table, but it also plays an important role in the global digital evolution.

This is according to Hardy Pemhiwa, CEO of Cassava Technologies, who spoke at an event to announce the expansion of African Data Centres' (ADC) CPT1 facility in Cape Town last week.

ADC is a Cassava Technologies subsidiary that operates Africa's largest network of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, according to the company.

The extra expansion of CPT1 was made possible by a loan of up to $300 million from the US International Development Finance Corporation to ADC.

"We totally believe Africa not only should be on the table, we have a right to play in digital transformation, that is why we put capital to have data centre like this," said Pemhiwa.

He went on to say: "Many people have asked why data centres, why Cape Town, and why we should build data centres across Africa. Well, the world is moving to the cloud, and the cloud cannot exist without data centres. They are at the heart of what drives cloud computing today, but we also see a future in which Africa can play a part in the artificial intelligence revolution.

"The data centre you see in Cape Town has been built in order to support AI compute for the first time on the African continent."

The CPT1 expansion saw the data centre behemoth add three new modern halls in new areas of campus, as well as an additional 6MW of IT load, virtually doubling its current capacity.

In terms of scale, the expansion added 1000 racks of white space, or space available for clients to lease, the facility itself is significantly larger. It consists of two new colocation data halls and one hyperscale hall.

According to the company, the new halls were built using ADC's 'cutting-edge modular design', which provides rapid scalability and a modern design that allows the facility to be populated as needed to meet the needs of the customer.