(Ecofin Agency) - With digital transformation accelerating across Africa, there is a surge in investment in the African data center market. Recently, Onix Data Centres launched its second West African data center in Dakar, Senegal.

Nigerian Tier 3 neutral data center operator Rack Centre recently announced plans to build a new facility in Ikeja, Lagos State. Named Rack Centre LGS 2, the new facility will span over 20,000 square meters, increasing the company's net rentable space to 3,240 square meters. It will be equipped with 12 MW of computing capacity with a total computing power of 13.5 MW.

According to the company, the move is part of its ambition to expand its capacity tenfold to meet the growing demand for data colocation, interconnection, and cloud in West Africa. In September 2020, the company announced a 100 million investment program for this purpose. In 2021, it doubled its capacity to 1.5 MW and added 600 square meters of white space.

The investment comes amidst increasing investment in Africa to fill the data center capacity gap as digital transformation accelerates on the continent. According to the "Data Centres in Africa" report by Oxford Business Group, the continent needs 700 facilities and 1,000 MW of IT capacity to meet the demand and match South Africa's market leadership.

“The Lagos Campus data centre has grown to be the largest carrier and cloud-neutral digital infrastructure hub in West Africa, and with this expansion, we intend on further growing our thriving ecosystem,” said Ezekiel Egboye (photo), Chief Operating Officer at Rack Centre.

Isaac K. Kassouwi