In Africa, the demand for data centers is growing, along with rising demand for broadband connectivity and cloud services. To meet those demands, local and foreign companies are stepping up investments.

Last week, Ghanaian vice president Mahamudu Bawumia (photo, right) inaugurated a Tier 4 data center at Amrahia, in the Greater Accra region. The 20 megawatts infrastructure costs US$48 million. It will help meet the growing demand for digital services in Ghana and West Africa. 

The facility features world-class infrastructure with redundancy for all components and up to 99.95% uptime. This allows it to host data storage servers for various organizations and businesses, keeping them up and running without interruption. The facility is partially powered by solar energy. Connectivity will be provided by Vodafone, Comsys Holdings Corp, and CSquared Innovations Inc. There are also plans to install an Internet Exchange Point (IXP).

The investment is part of the Ghanaian government's digital ambitions. As digital transformation accelerates across Africa, Accra wants to ensure that the country has adequate data to guide its digitization program. According to Bawumia, the new data center will "satisfy the increasingly stringent requirements laid down by regulated entities such as banks, healthcare providers, and certain arms of government which manage sensitive information." 

In March 2021, the African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIM) fund and the management team of Onix Data Centres Ltd acquired a majority stake in Ngoya Etix DC (Ghana) Ltd, a 170-rack capacity carrier-neutral data center. The objective was to expand the facility into the largest data center in Ghana. The investment comes against the backdrop of increased competition in the growing African data center market. Earlier this month, Africa Data Centres (ADC) announced it would install a 30-megawatt data center in Accra.

Isaac K. Kassouwi