Will Huawei be the first cloud player to have datacentres in all four corners of the continent?

Huawei has revealed plans to add more cloud data centres in Africa, with East and West Africa identified as the next target regions.

The expansion programme will build on existing data centres in the northern and southern parts of the continent.

Speaking at the Unitech Talk virtual session, themed ‘The Thrilling Potential of Cloud and Artificial Intelligence’, James Sindani, Cloud Solutions architect at Huawei Kenya, disclosed the expansion plans.

Sindani also revealed that Huawei Cloud had recently expanded into Egypt, representing its maiden foray into North Africa.

The company was one of the first ‘hyperscale’ providers to establish a data centre in South Africa, the continent’s largest economy and data centre market, back in 2019.

In Kenya, Huawei currently has a point-of-presence site, which uses a dedicated connection between the East African country and South Africa. According to Sindani, this enables clients to access their resources with minimal latency and the fastest possible speed.

“We are also planning to expand further into West Africa and East Africa in the near future,” he said.

In terms of rankings, Sindani said that Huawei’s cloud services are the second-largest in China and the fifth-largest globally.