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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
of these facilities is to provide clients, business expected to grow quickly due to the
partners and academic institutions with access comparative lack of traditional data centre
to extended big data, analytics, mobile and infrastructure and IT skills in Africa, thus
Cloud Computing technologies. 12 making cloud services very appealing for
companies in the continent.
At present, demand for Cloud Computing
is greatest in South Africa, but there is an Governments across Africa have
increasing appetite in other African recognised the potential of using
countries like Kenya and Nigeria. And,
communication technology
with internet connectivity improving,
platforms and applications in the
Cloud Computing will rapidly gain pace in
other African countries as well. public sector to deliver government
information and services to their
Cloud adoption in South Africa and Kenya has citizens.
so far has been dependent on the enterprise
There are already many examples of successful
size and sector.13 Small and medium
e-governance projects in countries like Kenya,
enterprises have been especially keen to
Senegal and Mozambique among others.
adopt Cloud Computing, taking advantage of
Many predict the rest of Africa will also join the
affordable and convenient public cloud
global transition towards e-governance. As the
offerings. Some sectors such as the financial
online content that African governments
services, healthcare, and the government have
produce begins to be updated and changed
so far been reluctant to adopt cloud services
daily, the demand to store this information in
due to security concerns. Nevertheless, banks
local data centres will increase in order to
and insurance companies are starting to shift
reduce costs and access times.
some of their non-core applications such as e-
mail to the cloud to test the reliability of cloud
services.
Africas total bandwidth usage has
grown considerably with the rollout
In addition to the simple catch up effect with of fibre infrastructure across the
developed markets, cloud solutions are continent.
An important driver behind the rise in demand
for data centre services is the rollout of fibre
infrastructure across the continent, which has
made local hosting more viable and cost-
competitive. This creates a good opportunity
for international data centre operators to
expand into the Sub-Saharan African markets.
IBM unveils new Mainframe Linux Centers in Africa, Source: IBM.com, May 2014.
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
Citizens Data
African Data
Government Data Centre Growth Business Data
Fibre Infrastructure
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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concentration of data centres in the whole of the continent,
we expect Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya among others to
capture more of the Sub-Saharan data centre market share
over the next decade.
The data centre market in Sub-Saharan Africa At the other end of the spectrum, there are
has expanded in capacity and revenue, but this countries like Mozambique, Niger, and Zambia
growth has so far been concentrated in South whose data centre markets are still at a nascent
Africa. South Africa has the most developed stage. In these markets there exist only a few
and sophisticated data centre market on the small local operators, with no global operators
continent, with an estimated 100,000 sqm of currently offering data centre services.
floor space as of 2014, according to some
estimations.14 After South Africa, the countries The current unequal distribution of data
hosting the highest number of data centre centres between South Africa and the rest of
facilities are Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya with the continent is illustrated in the diagram
major ISPs and Telcos dominating the data below.
centre scene.
Botswana Zimbabwe
Mozam-
Uganda bique
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
While public sector investment in Africa The mobile industry is now very competitive,
has increased considerably in the last with most African countries having at least
decade, the private sector remains the three operators. Growth in the sector is
principal driver for investment and has slowing but investment opportunities remain,
invested close to $50 billion in ICT in the especially in the field of infrastructure
outsourcing. Internet access is considerably
last 10 years.15
underdeveloped compared to the mobile
penetration; however, this is changing due to
While the majority of investments in the ICT
the rollout of submarine cables along Africas
sector has been directed towards mobile and
coastline. Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia,
related applications, the recent focus has been
Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania are among the
on international submarine cables and
countries that have launched plans for the
broadband infrastructure across the continent.
rollout of their national backbone networks
over the last years in order to provide access
to rural areas. In terms of fibre backbones,
Figure 4. Estimated Size of The ICT South Africa acts as a connectivity hub for
Enterprise Services Market 2013 neighbouring southern African countries, while
circa $9 billion in whole of Africa in West Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal act
as hubs for the region.
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Sub-Saharan Africa has the opportunity to become a
pioneer in green, energy-efficient solutions that it could use
to power its data centres.
According to the International Renewable Africa has the potential to leapfrog the carbon
Energy Agency, Sub-Saharan Africa has energy age and enter straight into renewable
immense technical potential for clean energy energy, creating opportunities for large data
projects, and if substantial investment flows centre operators to procure clean energy
into Africa, the continents renewable energy directly or to invest in their own renewable
capacity could quadruple to about 120 energy facilities.
gigawatts by 2030.16 With the cost of wind and
solar energy dropping significantly in recent Africa has already demonstrated its
years, renewable power is increasingly remarkable leapfrogging ability in the
considered a less expensive alternative to telecommunications sector by skipping
other forms of energy such as coal and gas- directly to mobile phones. African
powered plants.17 countries, most of which lack traditional
data centre infrastructure, are in a very
Many African countries already operate small-
good position to leapfrog developed
scale wind, geothermal and solar facilities that
economies in data centre solutions and
provide energy to cities and rural areas and
fast track their participation in global
South Africa is already in the global green
energy league. Among the countries we markets.
surveyed, Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, and
Ethiopia all have large scale renewable energy
(mainly wind and solar) facilities under
development. Nigerias Renewable Energy
Master Plan (REMP) is being implemented by
the Federal Ministry of Environment with the
purpose of increasing renewable energys
contribution to 10 percent of the countrys
total energy consumption by 2025. In
addition, many African countries, including
Nigeria, are currently opening the energy
sector to independent power suppliers and
incentivising the use of renewable energy
supply in the generation mix. Several of the
African countries surveyed are also using fiscal
intervention as a means to induce the supply
of renewable energy through subsidies, grants
and rebates.
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
Appendix
Sub-Saharan Africa Data Centre Index Rating
As part of our research into the data centre market in Sub-Saharan Africa Source8
has developed the Sub-Saharan Africa Data Centre Index. The purpose of this
index is to help companies looking for data centre and co-location facilities in
Africa make an evidence-based and educated investment decision about where to
co-locate. The Data Centre Index ranks 17 countries based upon the attractiveness
of their data centre market.
This is evaluated based on criteria considered most likely to affect a data centres
operations (energy, security, electricity cost, water availability, network readiness,
total international bandwidth, number of data centres, number of submarine fibre
optic cable systems, political stability, quality of education system, prevalence of
natural disasters, ease of doing business, among other factors). The weighting
used in our scoring model is flexible and can be adjusted based on the clients
priorities, such as the need to establish presence or upgrade operations in a
particular country/region, as well as the risk approach. Risks posed by some of the
macro indicators analysed are easier to mitigate or manage than others.
Source8 would be delighted to discuss the Data Centre Index and provide in-
depth country analysis upon request.
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
Our three core competencies combined with our unique ability to operate
securely in both stable and fragile markets enable us to deliver sector
specific, fully integrated infrastructure solutions anywhere in the world.
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Four Trends- Sub-Saharan African Data Centres January 2015
Armela Kokona
E-mail: Armela.Kokona@Source8.com
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7752 0706
Mobile: +44 (0) 77 3059 8347
Bibliography
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