Some good news from East Africa, where the promised opening of a new data centre facility could offer some economic opportunities for Ugandans.
The new data centre will be on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital, Kampala. It is due to open in June.
The Raxio Uganda facility is marketed as a colocation facility, pitching for Ugandan businesses (such as finance) and government agencies. The facility was first announced in 2018 but has been delayed.
Raxio says its data centre – the first of its kind in Uganda – will be operating as a carrier-neutral facility, meeting the international Tier III standard. Upon final phase completion, the data centre will able to house around 400 racks and to provide 1.5MW of IT power to ensure the equipment housed within it operates optimally, 24/7, in a fully safe, secure and redundant environment.
The Raxio data centre is being built in the Namanve Industrial and Business Park, which means, says Raxio, that it will be ideally located for addressing both the primary and disaster recovery needs of its customers. Being along one of Uganda’s principal fibre routes also ensures optimal connectivity.
Roha, a US investment group focused on African infrastructure projects, is building a series of data centres in Africa under the name Raxio. To build facilities in Uganda and elsewhere, it has established a data centre subsidiary called First Brick Holdings Group.
First Brick Holdings is now building a Raxio Data Centre in Ethiopia. Ten other facilities across the continent are also planned.
One reason for this activity is latency. Much internet content is not in Africa; local data centres would allow for faster connectivity. Also a local data centre gives private businesses a chance to rent space in a data centre rather than store data on their own servers.
