Johannesburg data centre expansion begins

Africa Data Centres has commenced expansion of its Samrand facility from 10MW to 40MW, taking the company’s total platform capacity past the100MW mark.

Africa Data Centres is a sister company to Liquid Intelligent Technologies and a subsidiary of pan-African technology group Cassava Technologies.

 “The expansion will happen in multiple phases,” says Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres. “The construction of the first phase … will deliver 20MW across eight data halls by 2023. The next phase will include an additional 10MW of IT load by the end of 2025. The infrastructure will be fully modular with all critical plant rooms being prefabricated off-site.”

The company recently said it was expanding its capacity in Johannesburg to 100MW of IT load. This announcement comes hot on the heels of the recent launch of a new 10MW data centre at the company’s campus in Midrand and the expansion of the organisation’s operations in Accra, Ghana.  

“This is a step forward in the organisation’s massive expansion plans announced in September, the most ambitious data centre expansion plans Africa has ever seen,” says Durvasula.

This will see the data centre giant building large hyper-scale data centres across Africa, including the top five data centre markets in North Africa, namely Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. 

“Our investment of $500-million will enable Africa Data Centres to build numerous interconnected, cloud- and carrier-neutral data centres across the continent. It will more than double our already significant footprint on the continent and aims to help Africa achieve its digital transformation goals.”

The breaking of ground for Africa Data Centres’ Johannesburg facilities is an integral part of the expansion, as South Africa is one of the most important data centre markets in Africa and a gateway for smaller neighbouring markets.

“South Africa is a strategic location, being at the southern-most point of Africa and is undoubtedly the de facto data centre and technology hub for the sub-Saharan Africa region,” says Durvasula. “This, in conjunction with the increasing fibre connectivity brought by both undersea and terrestrial fibre networks, makes it at the vanguard of data centre expansion on the continent”.

Africa Data Centres’ ongoing investments in data centre facilities will enable global cloud clients to service the entire sub-Saharan African region.