Burkina Faso launches two mini-data centres in data sovereignty push

Details: John Tanner; Category: Data Centres & Networks; 26 January 2026; 7848 views

The government of Burkina Faso inaugurated two new mini data centres on Friday in a move to boost data sovereignty as well as the country’s digital infrastructure.

According to a Facebook post from the Ministry of Digital Transition, Posts and Electronic Communications, the data centres offer a combined storage capacity of around 3,000TB, which it says is a tenfold increase from existing systems.

The data centres – which were commissioned by Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo on Friday – can support over 7,000 virtual machines, which allows each ministry to host between 100 and 300 virtual servers for the deployment of digital platforms.

The ministry said the two data centres cost an estimated XAF16 billion (around US$30 million), and are expected to generate savings of approximately XAF30 billion over five years by reducing expenses linked to hosting government platforms abroad.

The facilities will also be operated by national technical teams, which the ministry said will reinforce local expertise and build long-term capacity in the country’s digital ecosystem.

The ministry said the data centre project – which is part of 12 major digital transformation projects in Burkina Faso – is an interim step towards construction of a large national data centre, with the goal of repatriating all public administration and private sector digital data currently housed outside the country.