Africa Data Centres (ADC), one of the continent’s largest storage players and a part of Strive Masiyiwa’s newly launched Cassava Technologies, says it will spend just under R8bn expanding its facilities over the next two years, much of this in SA.
At a media briefing, Stephane Duproz, CEO at ADC, said the company has set aside $500m (R7.848bn) to enable it to more than double its already significant footprint in Africa.
Duproz says about half the funds will be used in SA, specifically to expand their facilities in Midrand and Samrand. The company is looking to buy land to build another 50MW site.
The expansion plans will result in ADC building 10 hyperscale data centres across Africa including in SA, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and Egypt. The company recently launched a new 10MW data centre at its campus in Midrand.
Largest data centre market in Africa
Johannesburg is considered to be the largest data centre — dedicated spaces for servers and IT equipment — market in Africa, attracting investment from various local and international players in recent years. As a whole, the country has been capitalising on growing demand for remote data storage and other IT services in the region.
SA generally has attracted much investment in data centres.
Back in August, Africa’s largest data centre provider, Teraco, said it will spend R6bn over the next four years to expand its capacity in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban as growing cloud computing use increases demand for data centre services.
Through its centres, Teraco provides connections for global tech firms such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The company now holds 40% of data centre capacity within Sub-Saharan Africa.
In October, US-based Vantage Data Centers said it plans to invest more than R15bn in a Johannesburg data centre and campus.
International tech giants Amazon and Microsoft have also invested in the space, focusing their efforts mainly in the Western Cape.
But even in the face of all of this competition, Duproz is sure there is enough space for all the players, explaining that there is still room for much growth in the sector.
“Africa makes up about 15% of the world’s population. That number is expected to go up to 20% or 25% in the coming years, yet the continent only makes up about 1% of the data centre market.” With increasing connectivity and demand for online services, “there is room for everyone”, he said.
While the market looks to be a money-spinner in the years ahead, the investment in data centres is for Masiyiwa to be part of a broader plan of diversifying the telecom and technology group he founded back in the 1990s.
Earlier in November, Econet said it had launched Cassava Technologies, which will house its digital services and infrastructure product segments such as fibre, data centres and renewable energy, as well as cloud services, cybersecurity and fintech.
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