Kathy Gibson reports from Tognana, Italy – South Africa is holding its own in the globally-competitive data centre market.
Not only are most of the big data centre players operating at scale in South Africa, they are largely doing so using clean and reliable electricity – something many European data centres are still grappling with.
This is the word from Lex Coors, president and policy committee chairman of the European Data Centre Association, addressing a media round table after a Data Centre Associations meeting hosted by Vertiv.
Other African countries, meanwhile, are in a good position to leapfrog other economies – much as the continent did with mobile phones and fintech development.
And this will help to unlock the flow of money in the economy, Coors explains. “Especially for Africa, this will unlock a lot of wealth.”
Luisa Cardani, head of data centres programme at TechUK, adds the caveat that a reliable power supply is key. “If you want to be a superpower and future-proof the economy, you need clean, renewable, cheap power.
“If you haven’t clocked that as a government I can’t help you – you are already behind.”
It was pointed out that the power grid in South Africa might go down periodically – but the data centres don’t lose power, because they ensure their own reliable supply.
Piotr Kowalski, MD of the Poland Data Centre Association, concurs that South Africa has built a very strong digital infrastructure, with new data centres under construction in countries like Nigeria and Kenya.
In addition, the exponential increase in submarine cables coming into Africa creates more opportunities to be competitive on the global market, he adds.
Emmanual Becker, advisory board member of the Italian Data Center Association (IDA), agrees that these submarine cables are shortening the route between continents. “The biggest submarine projects are in Africa, and – since there is not economy without digital – this will help to grow GDP, education, and employment.”
He adds that all the factors needed to drive a digital economy are present in Africa: population density, GDP density, density of digital providers, and density of digital consumers who, in turn, provide digital services.