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.
The site will be managed through Raxio’s Ethiopian subsidiary and will house a data centre built to Uptime’s Tier III specifications. The Uptime Institute describes itself as the standard bearer for digital infrastructure performance. Its Tier Standard has been used in the design, construction and operations of thousands of sites in more than 100 countries.
The Raxio Ethiopia facility will be commissioned in Q3 2021. The new facility will accommodate an IT-capacity of 1.5MW over the next few years, with the possibility of doubling capacity to 3MW as demand grows.
This is Ethiopia’s first privately owned data centre. As we announced in September, the key target industries for Raxio Ethiopia will be financial services, cloud service providers, IT companies, media companies, local and regional enterprises, and content delivery networks. As the telecommunications sector opens up, new carriers and internet service providers are expected to join these industries to create a new hub of connectivity in the country.
The opening up of the Ethiopian telecommunications sector, notwithstanding a few recent hiccoughs, is certainly likely to provide an attractive environment for data centre development in Ethiopia. Indeed Ato Sandokan Debebe, CEO of Industrial Parks Development Corporation, has been quoted as saying: “Following the holistic reform that our nation is undergoing, new mobile operators are expected to be licensed soon; as a result, our internet usage is projected to rapidly grow.”
Raxio is planning to open 10-12 new facilities across Africa, including new facilities planned in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Raxio says the data centres will, like the Addis Ababa site, meet Uptime’s standards and be built to Tier III specifications.
