Pan-African Internet Exchange (PAIX) data centres, a provider of cloud-and carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, has confirmed its investment in West Africa Data Centres Ltd (WADC), Ghana, trading as 'Rack Africa'.

WADC is an established carrier-neutral data centre offering co-location services from its Accra data centre since 2011.

According to a statement issued by PAIX, RackAfrica serves a diversified customer base of more than 20 network operators and network services providers from its Accra data centre facility and has the advantage of access to all four undersea cables that land in Ghana.

These include West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) fibre optic cable system, and SAT-3/WASC.

PAIX's investment in RackAfrica marks the launch of its colocation services in Ghana and West Africa as part of its strategy of building a Pan-African data centre platform.

The investment will also enable RackAfrica to accelerate its growth and expand to meet the growing demand for its colocation and interconnection data centre services in Ghana. Further expansion of its data centre capacity is planned this year.

Following PAIX's investment, Wouter van Hulten, CEO and Harbir Singh Nat, CFO of PAIX have become Board Directors of RackAfrica.

Wouter van Hulten, CEO, PAIX: "We are very pleased with our investment in RackAfrica as it uniquely positions our company in Accra, Ghana at the digital gateway to Western Africa, a key regional network hub that is created by the aggregation of multiple undersea cable landing points connecting to terrestrial cables on the African Continent. We have received strong interest from our international connectivity, social media, and cloud customers seeking to serve the West African markets that can be accessed by these cables through RackAfrica's data centre in Accra."

"What makes the datacentre interesting is that RackAfrica is the hub for connectivity in Ghana, the only carrier-neutral datacentre," van Hulten continues.

He has worked closely with the Internet Society in the promotion of connectivity across Africa. He said while the continent's datacentre market is relatively small in comparison with Europe, for example, there is growing interest. He adds that projects are adversely affected by a lack of resources, primarily in terms of financing, engineering, know-how and skills.

There is significant development in East Africa and growth opportunities, and Van Hulten says the plan is to partner with the right people and PAIX has identified Johannesburg, South Africa; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Maputo and Nacala, Mozambique; as well as Kampala, Uganda as future locations.