Africa Data Centres, part of the Cassava Technologies Group, a pan-African technology group, has announced that it is building a 30MW data centre facility in Accra, Ghana.
The new facility will lay the groundwork for the company’s hyper-scale partners to expand digital services and solutions to more countries in West Africa and will make Africa Data Centres the largest provider in West Africa, with facilities in Nigeria, Togo and now Ghana.
According to Tesh Durvasula, Chief Executive Officer at Africa Data Centres, the Accra operation is a significant milestone for Africa Data Centres and highlights the massive growth opportunity the company sees for its business in the region and the continent. “We are witnessing an unprecedented demand for digital services, apps, broadband, cloud technologies, and more, all of which are seeing data demand soar to unimagined levels,” said Durvasula.
The 30MW facility in Accra will play a significant role in leading the charge for hyper-scale customers to deploy digitisation solutions to West Africa. “This new facility will be a giant leap forward in our ambitious long-term plans to close the digital divide in Africa by bringing digital services to more businesses and people. We chose Accra as our next location since there is an existing high demand from hyper-scalers, cloud operators and multi-national enterprises to digitally transform West Africa,” Durvasula states.
In addition to bringing digital services, the data centre will create numerous job opportunities through the digitisation of the economy and hiring local contractors and workers for the builds, from entry to high-tech level.
According to Durvasula, “Many exciting innovations have their home in Africa, and numerous startups are raising billions to debut disruptive models across a wide range of sectors. Moreover, with Ghana being the second-largest economy in West Africa, it also is an attractive investment destination for international tech giants that want to expand their footprint in the region”.
Seamless connectivity is key to helping Ghanaian businesses and citizens reap the rewards of the digital disruptions happening across West Africa. However, the lack of necessary infrastructure has resulted in slower growth than the rest of the world.
Opening a data centre aligns with our expansion plans and is timeous as the government in Ghana has been introducing innovative and forward-thinking digital projects over the last few years. Although there has been significant growth in the past fear years, many Ghanaian citizens remain without digital services.
As the largest network of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities on the continent, we are continuously working to provide the infrastructure to reduce this digital divide. Being a business of Cassava Technologies, we intend to play a significant role in bringing to Ghana the necessary digital and infrastructure services required to support the mass adoption of digital services in the country and the wider continent.
Africa has never seen plans like this before, Durvasula ends. “The Africa Data Centres team aims to build many interconnected, cloud- and carrier-neutral data centres across the length and breadth of the continent in an unrivalled $500m investment in Africa’s digital transformation.”
