The American business Equinix, which operates data centers, intends to spend 160 million dollars on the construction of its first data center on the African continent, which will be located in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Eugene Bergen, the company’s president for EMEA, stated that the facility should be operational by the middle of 2024.
Following Equinix’s $320 million acquisition of Nigeria’s MainOne in 2021, this development is not surprising.
To capitalize on the industry’s growth, the company is targeting young people in Africa who have access to the internet.
The company hopes to provide significant businesses, including as banks, content and media organizations, and hyper-scalers operating in the nation and throughout the continent, with its South African data center.
According to Bergen, the company places a high priority on energy dependability across all of its operations, and it takes measures to maintain a steady supply, such as increasing its own power capacity, setting up several backup generators, and negotiating with regional grids.
The future of the IT giant’s data center business in Africa is still up in the air, particularly in light of the growing competition from other global firms.
In recent years, as demand for storage and cloud computing has increased, Equinix has joined IT powerhouses like Google and Microsoft in investing in data centers throughout Africa.
Read more on Tech Gist Africa:
Equinix expands into Africa with the completion of its US$320 million acquisition of MainOne
Africa Data Centres will invest $500 million in the development of ten data centers across Africa