While South Africa is home to the largest concentration of data centres on the African continent, the appeal of West Africa seems to be growing, with new developments planned for both Senegal and Nigeria.
The first of these involves the Morocco-based data centre company N+One, which has said it is planning to build three data centres in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
Details of size and power density are not yet available, but we do know that N+One has partnered with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Telecommunications, along with the General Delegation for Rapid Entrepreneurship of Women and Youth (DER/FJ) and the Digital Technologies Park of Senegal (PTN), as part of the country’s Digital Senegal plan.
The Senegal Digital Technology Park in Dakar was first announced in 2015. Part-funded by the African Development Bank, the 25-hectare site aims to promote the country as a base for international technology companies.
Meanwhile, a company with a strong presence in South Africa and Kenya is now branching out into the west of the continent. Africa Data Centres has said it plans to build a data centre in Lagos, Nigeria.
Construction of the 10MW facility is apparently well underway, with the first phase due to go live in the middle of this year.
As with many new data centre projects there is a sustainability element. The company says it will be using non-potable water for cooling and utilizing solar energy to offset its reliance on the grid.
Currently, ADC has facilities in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi.
Nor are these the only recent announcements relating to West Africa and data centres. As we reported in March, Ghana’s only Tier IV data centre has reportedly been bought by fund management group African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), which now promises to make the former Etix facility the largest data centre in the country.
