Data Centres & Networks

Ghana’s only Tier IV data centre has reportedly been bought by fund management group African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), which now promises to make the former Etix facility the largest data centre in the country.

The  Raxio Group, a pan-African data centre developer and operator, has claimed a first. It will establish and invest in Raxio Kinshasa, the first in a series of state-of-the-art, privately owned, carrier-neutral data centres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Chinese cloud company Tencent Cloud has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) that will see the company build a data centre in the kingdom. This will be its first MENA facility in Bahrain.

Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of the Adani Group, one of India’s largest multi-infrastructure organizations, and EdgeConneX, a leading global data centre operator with 50 facilities in 30 markets around the world, have announced a 50:50 joint venture to develop and operate data centres throughout India.

IXAfrica, the new-entrant data centre operator in Kenya, has announced plans to build what it describes as a world-leading and sustainable campus at a newly secured location in Nairobi.

Nokia has launched the 8th edition of its Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT) 2021, outlining mobile broadband performance in India during 2020.

Oracle has announced plans to set up a new data centre in Jerusalem; it will function as a regional cloud provider for Israeli clients.

A study by Peru’s regulator Osiptel has found that an additional 36,695 base stations must be deployed by 2025 to meet growing data demand among the country’s subscribers.

Myanmar’s operators have restored internet services one day after being ordered to suspend them amid mass protests against the country’s authorities.

Teraco Data Environments, which describes itself as Africa’s largest interconnection hub and vendor-neutral data centre provider, says it has raised $170 million to fund its data centre construction efforts.

Orange Maroc, the Moroccan division of the multinational telecommunications company Orange, has acquired EtixEverywhere Maroc, part of European global data centre developer and operator EtixEverywhere. As part of this acquisition Orange is also to be the owner of a data centre in Casablanca, Morocco.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), a data centre service provider headquartered in Singapore, has reportedly proposed plans for a greenfield data centre campus in Noida, India.

Recent deals involving Chile and Brazil underline the continuing growth of the data centre market in South America.

The formal establishment of Ethiopia’s first-ever carrier-neutral hyperscale data centre park, located in the ICT Park, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, took place this week when wingu.africa, a pan-East African data centre operator based in Djibouti, broke ground on the development.

Saudi Arabia-based operator STC launched three “mega data centres” in Riyadh, Jeddah and Madina with an investment of SAR1 billion ($266 million) pledged for the project, as part of the country’s digital transformation programme.

Liquid Telecom announced plans to build the largest African data centre outside of South Africa in Nigeria, which will lead by a new CEO in the country. 

Ascenty, a leading name in the Latin American data centre market, has announced that a second unit is now in operation on the company’s mega-campus in Vinhedo, a Brazilian city in the state of Sao Paulo.

Data centre company Ascenty has announced the opening of the Chile 1 data centre in Santiago, the company's first unit to start operating outside Brazil.

Underlining the growing interest on the part of US technology companies in India, Amazon, through Amazon Web Services (AWS), reportedly has plans to invest an estimated $2.8 billion in the city of Hyderabad, Telangana State, India, to set up a new cloud region – or AWS Region, as it is known.

Data centre specialist SpaceDC has announced the launch of JAK2, a new data centre in Indonesia sited in the ID01 campus, which will also be home to the company’s other flagship data centre JAK1.

As CSP’s experience disruption to traffic patterns as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic, what are the key challenges facing their data centres?

African data centre developer and operator Raxio says it has officially secured land at the Ethio ICT Park in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for its newest data centre.

Chayora Limited, an international infrastructure investor, developer and operator of hyperscale data centre campuses in China, has been confirmed by the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) to be the first data centre facility having achieved OCP Ready certification in China.

The data centre market continues to be a busy place – as indicated by recent news from both Poland and Croatia.

Recent announcements from Oman and Nigeria underline the continuing growth of data centres across multiple regions outside their traditional homes in the US and Europe.

Chile will soon be housing a second Huawei data centre. In fact Huawei plans to launch the new cloud data centre in Chile by the end of this year, boosting its cloud and AI platform in South America.

Six days after agreeing to the Dh800 million (about $218 million) deal, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company has reportedly formalised the sale of a 26 percent indirect stake in Khazna Data Centre to another UAE group, Technology Holding Company.

Cloud and data centres in the Asia-Pacific region are among the fastest-growing in the world. That’s the finding of a new report from Tariff Consultancy Ltd service Datacentrepricing.

Altus IT, the leading carrier-neutral data centre provider in Croatia, has been acquired by Interxion, a Digital Realty company.

IP connectivity supplier Telia Carrier penned an agreement with Equinix in Mexico to expand its network in North America, a move to expand its footprint and meet growing demand for high speed internet connections.

Data centre operator Rack Centre has announced an expansion programme that will increase capacity in its Lagos campus in Nigeria.

A new data centre is about to open in Kenya, courtesy of PAIX Data Centres, an African provider of cloud and carrier-neutral colocation data centre services.