Onix Data Centre has Partnered with Africa Data Centres

Onix Data Centre has entered into a partnership with Africa Data Centres, in an alliance powering interconnected data centres. This collaboration will strengthen data security and accessibility, while enhancing Ghana’s digitisation goals.

Here, we take a closer look at data centres in Africa, from new partnerships to national grids to the role of women. 

Africa Data Centres Partners with Onix Data Centre to Bolster West African Presence

As reported in our Top 10 Data Centre Companies in the Middle East and Africa, the Africa data centre market size is expected to cross US$3bn by 2025. The market has remained comparatively strong after the pandemic, it continues to steadily grow.

Africa Data Centres will work with Onix Data Centre, to advance its presence in West Africa.

Africa Data Centres’ goal is to expand its data centre footprint throughout the continent and offer top-class data centre solutions to its customers. Through this partnership, digital infrastructure will be expanded, ensuring better security and performance. The collaboration has also seen the involvement of UniCloud Africa, which aims to support big businesses as well as SMEs, increasing economic growth and digital transformation across the region. 

“One of the strategic partnerships is that we are going into different markets in Africa with the Africa Data Center,” shared Ladi Okuneye, CEO of UniCloud Africa. “So, upon our entry into the Ghanaian market, we thought it was benefitting for us to come in at a time that they were also establishing their strategic relationship with Onix. So, we are really excited to be bringing domesticated cloud services to the Ghanaian market.”

Yen Choi, Chief Executive Officer, Onix Data Centre, said that the company was excited about this partnership opportunity. 

“Onix Data Centre is the most renowned Tier 4 data centre in the region,” he said. “We only succeed through partnerships. Partnerships at all levels with other data centres, with network service providers, with system integrators.”

The deal will primarily be focused in Ghana, but also explore other opportunities across West African markets. 

Data centres and national grids

South Africa is currently facing electricity supply challenges, with blackouts common. As data centres operate 24 hours a day and consume huge volumes of electricity, reliance solely on the national grid is causing problems. 

Although many South African data centres already have their own backup power and water supplies, a new policy from South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) has ordered data centre providers to reduce their dependence on the country’s national power grid.

All data centres in South Africa have been asked to comply with the following:

• Data centres must be built and operated in adherence to environmental legislation
• They must not be built in restricted areas like heritage sites, national key points or land designated for land reform
• Data centres must not be located in areas prone to natural disasters or social disturbances
• Data centres must be able provide verifiable certification credentials to all customers
• Data centres used by the government should comply with a fault-tolerant design that provides a minimum uptime of 99.995%.

“This announcement represents a significant stride in our initiative to energise South African data centres sustainably, advancing our objective of achieving carbon neutrality,” said Africa Data Centres CEO, Tesh Durvasula.

African women in the data centre sector

One problem that persists across the whole data centre sector is the low number of women working in it. As the data centre industry gains traction across Africa, as well as the Middle East, it is essential that gender diversity should also be growing. As women currently make up less than 10% of the data centre industry - we featured ten of the best in our Top 10: Women in Data Centres in MEA.

******

Make sure you check out the latest edition of Data Centre Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Tech & AI LIVE 2024

******

Data Centre Magazine is a BizClik brand