Data centre operator Rack Centre has announced an expansion programme that will increase capacity in its Lagos campus in Nigeria.
The company, which describes itself as the leading carrier-neutral data centre operator in West Africa, is expanding the total net lettable white space of the campus to 6,000 square metres; with this expansion it will allow for 13MW of IT power capacity.
This will be in addition to the current expansion already underway to double existing capacity to 1.5MW and 1,200 square metres of white space in early 2021. Engineering consultancy Arup has been appointed for the project.
The expansion is said to be in response to increasing demand for data centre space due to cloud uptake, telecommunication investment and outsourcing of IT facilities by enterprises in the region.
The funding for this expansion will come from a $250 million pan-African data centre platform established by Actis, a London private equity firm, and Convergence Partners, a leading ICT infrastructure investor in Africa.
In March this year, Actis announced an investment in Rack Centre, taking a controlling stake in the business alongside Jagal, a Nigerian conglomerate holding that operates leading energy businesses and manages a diverse portfolio of investments.
In addition to Rack Centre, the Actis-Convergence Partners platform is also actively developing additional buy and build opportunities across Africa in order to establish a network of carrier-neutral data centres aimed at catering to carrier, cloud and hyperscale customers.
A lack of cost-effective, energy-efficient IT infrastructure has been a constraint to doing business in Nigeria, despite growing demand. Rack Centre says it brings global best practice to Nigeria as the first carrier-neutral data centre in the region to achieve Uptime Institute Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility (TCCF).
As for energy efficiency, the design of Rack Centre’s Phase 2 facility will target regional industry-leading power utilisation efficiency (PUE) benchmarks.
