Africa is poised for a data centre boom as internet penetration rates rise and the continent begins to play catch-up with other regions

According to Standard Bank, Africa accounts for less than 1% of the world’s co-location data centre supply, with SA accounting for the bulk of the continent’s capacity. Co-location facilities rent space, power and cooling to enterprise and hyperscale customers; they also offer interconnection enabling businesses to scale at low complexity and cost. Customers in Africa are increasingly using data centres to access public cloud-based services from hosts like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others. A substantial wave of data centre investments is expected to materialise across the continent, led by regional economic powerhouses including Nigeria, SA and Kenya. Other markets, including Ghana, which are attracting investment from big US tech giants like Twitter and Google, are increasingly seeing interest from data centre investors. Other secondary markets of interest include Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire, while interest in North Africa is also on the rise.