EXPERT OPINION countries , including large and medium sized businesses across a range of industry verticals .
The year of the ‘ big change ’
Since the publication of our last report in 2020 , there has been unprecedented levels of announced investment in data centres . According to Balancing Act , somewhere between US $ 5 – 6 billion will be invested in carrier neutral data centres in Africa over the next three to five years . For the first time , we have seen major investment in Africa from international data centre operators .
Digital Realty marked its arrival with the acquisition of Teraco , Medallion and iColo , while Equinix completed its US $ 320 million acquisition of MainOne . Vantage has also invested US $ 1 billion in the region .
Meanwhile , regional players such as Africa Data Centres and WIOCC ’ s Open Access Data Centres have also continued to invest in new facilities .
According to Balancing Act , the number of carrier-neutral data centres in the region has increased from 20 to 50 over the last two years , with a further 68 data centres in the pipeline .
South Africa continues to be a major regional hub with its data centre capacity surpassing the 100MW milestone . While other countries are still in tens or single digits , the arrival of more subsea networks , such as Google ’ s Equiano , A2Africa and the PEACE cable , are providing much-needed additional bandwidth capacity .
This will be critical for the region ’ s data centre and cloud ecosystem . Progress is not moving equally among African countries , but the report identifies that things are moving in the right direction .
Avoiding the legacy trap
The 2022 Africa Interconnection Report identifies that many companies and employees accelerated their transition to hybrid or remote working models during COVID-19 . Local companies that have www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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