Open Access Data Centres Laying The Infrastructure For Successful Deployment, Adoption Of 5G, IoT And Other Advances In Africa

Africa is far from realising the vision of a state-of-the-art, inclusive and copious digital infrastructure, but increasing  investments in this space is clearly changing things for the better, writes AYOTUNDE COKER.

Digital technologies promise to dramatically improve how people live, work, play and communicate. This is particularly true throughout sub-Saharan Africa where digitisation has the ability to deliver improved access to life-enhancing services for individuals, communities and enterprises that would otherwise be excluded through lack of infrastructure, skills and funding.

Key trends in the region’s digital landscape, including increasing digital adoption by small and major businesses and one of the world’s most youthful demographics, indicate growing demand for next-generation connectivity.

According to industry body the GSMA, by 2025, there will be commercial 5G services in at least seven African markets, including Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, totalling 28 million 5G connections.

With digital adoption by businesses growing and the GSMA reporting almost 50 per cent of the population subscribing to mobile services, the arrival of new hyperscale subsea systems, including Google’s Equiano and the Meta-led 2Africa is a vital enabler to further digitisation, implementing an upgraded digital backbone that will support ongoing cloud operator and content provider buildouts into Africa.

However, Africa remains a long way from the vision of a “modern and robust digital infrastructure that is inclusive and reaches all people” outlined in the Digital Council Africa’s 2021 annual report, which notes fixed fibre broadband household penetration remaining flat across sub-Saharan Africa at less than 3 per cent, and mobile internet subscriptions growing to just 30 per cent.

Islands of strong connectivity serve the largest urban areas, with network deployment to smaller cities and communities limited by capital investment constraints and unpredictable returns.

Transformational new data centre (DC) operator, Open Access Data Centres (OADC), established in 2018 as part of the WIOCC Group, is changing this situation for the better, bringing a unique proposition to Africa. OADC is not only building DCs in multiple countries, but is deploying facilities throughout a country, right-sizing each DC according to local demand (from hyperscale, through “midi” to edge).

Its flagship facility on a four-hectare campus in Lagos is a core hyperscale DC designed to deliver tens of Megawatts of critical power load, whilst the capacity of OADC Durban is hundreds of racks and a few Megawatts. In key metropolitan areas, “midi” DCs in the 200 to 400-rack range are undergoing fit-out, with capability to scale to 800+ racks as demand grows. And finally, at the network edge smaller facilities of up to 50 racks/150 kilowatts of critical power are rapidly coming onstream.

Since securing US$200m of funding in November 2021, OADC has moved at pace, with over 20 DCs operational in South Africa and more under construction there and in Nigeria. Its unique core-to-edge architecture supports:

• broadband and mobile operators in cost-effectively extending network reach

• the cloud community in migrating content closer to the network edge

• Coker is the Chief Executive Officer of Open Access Data Centres
• Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in BusinessDay.