When Africa Data Centres unveiled a massive capacity increase in its main Cape Town data centre recently, it was not merely aiming to win business in that city.
A sister company of telecoms giant Liquid Intelligent Technologies and part of the pan-African Cassava Technologies group, ADC operates nine data centres in six countries on the continent.
It has now added three state-of-the-art halls in its CPT1 facility, adding 6MW of capacity – measured in megawatts to indicate the total power a data centre can supply to clients’ equipment. The effective doubling of its current capacity was partly made possible by a $300-million loan from the United States government’s International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), as well as the backing of the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and the Ministry of ICT in the Western Cape Provincial Government.
“This expansion by Africa Data Centres is in response to the increasing demand for co-location capacity in South Africa,” said Hardy Pemhiwa, president and group CEO of Cassava, at a launch event in Cape Town. “Not only is Cape Town the second largest economy in South Africa, but it is also the de facto software and technology hub in Southern Africa.”
Acting US consul general Stacey Barrios told Business Times during the event that the US government was interested in supporting this project and ones like it “because we understand that the success of the world depends on African success”.
“In today’s world, success generally depends on access to data and Internet speeds. The only way that we’re going to make that happen globally, is by partnering in such a way that these kinds of capacities can be developed on the continent.
“The United States government is looking around the planet and thinking, what can we do to make a better world, genuinely to make sure that the rising tide really is lifting all the boats? This is the kind of investment that is going to do that. Ultimately, when Africa succeeds, America succeeds as well.”
The expansion adds 1,000 racks of white space – capacity available for customers to lease and house their own computer servers. The physical site is made up of two additional “colocation data halls”, where customers can share space, and one hyperscale hall, geared to large cloud computing providers.
ADC says the new halls are built in a “cutting-edge modular design pioneered by Africa Data Centres”, which enables rapid scalability.
The expansion comes as Cape Town prepares for even greater data centre expansion. Homegrown data centre company Teraco, which two years ago sold a majority share to US-based Digital Reality in a deal that valued it at $3.5-billion, is expanding its CT2 campus in the suburb of Brackenfell to a capacity of 30MW from an existing 18MW. Its older CT1 data centre has a “mere” 5MW capacity.
Key to this rapid expansion is the demand for “co-location” – companies renting space to house servers and equipment in a shared facility to benefit from advanced infrastructure, uninterrupted power and high security.
According to global consultancy Research & Markets, The Africa data centre colocation market is expected to reach a value of $1.23-billion a year by 2028, from $670 million in 2022, growing at 10.64% a year.
Santosh Naraidoo, product manager for colocation at undersea cable network Seacom, says Africa’s digital economy is growing at an astonishing rate, making dependable and scalable IT infrastructure indispensable.
“A key component of this growth is colocation, which enables multiple clients to store their servers and networking hardware in shared, third-party data centres. Recent developments in this sector point to a promising future for colocation services and the broader digital infrastructure landscape in Africa.”
The specific benefit it offers to enterprises, he says, is that “it provides a flexible solution that meets the growing computational and storage needs of businesses across the continent, making it a key enabler of digital transformation”.
“South Africa takes centre stage in the African data centre colocation market, wielding its influence as the primary driver of capacity in the region,” says Naraidoo. “With over 60% of the IT power capacity, South Africa’s allure as an investment hub for data centre facilities is unmistakable.”
Dr Angus Hay, regional executive for ADC in South Africa, told Business Times that the expansion was a natural consequence of the continent catching up to the rest of the world.
“Africa has 30% of the world’s population and 1% of the world’s data centres. That is changing and it is changing as the investment moves. You can think of it as the advancement of the edge of the cloud. We’re seeing the first moments of cloud deployment into the African continent, and we’ve seen that massive uptick. Just look at the graph of capacity in the South African market, and we’re seeing the same thing following other markets across the continent.”
*Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media on @art2gee.
