South Africa is rapidly positioning itself as the infrastructure backbone of digital economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. With the local data centres reaching capacity and many new facilities planned, strategies around artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud are shaping the next chapter in the country’s progress. However, according to DFA, South Africa’s premier enterprise connectivity provider, investment must keep pace with ambition.
“Building the right infrastructure is what will ensure that capacity, scalability and sustainability are aligned with the growth of the digital economy, otherwise the potential we’re seeing now could be handicapped by lagging infrastructure.” says Paul Divall, Chief Commercial Officer at DFA.
“DFA plays a critical role in enabling the data centre landscape. By connecting 100% of the country’s open-access data centres, including major facilities like Teraco, Africa Data Centres, Open Access Data Centres, Equinix, and Digital Parks Africa, we have the connectivity network footprint to allow our customers to operate anywhere within the ecosystem.”
“We are in the unique position to offer on-demand capacity over the entire open access data centre landscape. With so many players in the space offering unique benefits and models, our customers can seamlessly optimise their data centre utilisation and maximise efficiencies and economies of scale – without any connectivity roadblocks. This is critical for developing digital services where operators require local presence, route diversity and failure redundancy.”
According to recent industry market reports, Africa’s data-center construction market is expanding at a remarkable pace, projected to reach a value of approximately USD 3.06 billion by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of nearly 16%. In South Africa, this momentum is driven by surging demand for localized hosting, low-latency cloud services, and the high-performance processing capacity required to support AI workloads. As digital adoption increases across every sector, the need for reliable, high-speed infrastructure is critical.
The drivers of South Africa’s data centre growth
Several interrelated factors are fuelling the growth of data centres in South Africa. Remote work and hybrid working models, for example, have created a surge in demand for high-speed, high-capacity broadband from anywhere in the country. The recent acceleration of digital nomad visas will also add to this demand.
What’s more, businesses across finance, education, healthcare and retail increasingly rely on cloud-based solutions, which require localised, high-performance infrastructure. DFA supports global integration by providing vital links to all of the major data centres nationally (including 100% of all open access data centres) as well as all major undersea cable landing stations, ensuring that South African data centres remain seamlessly connected to the global digital ecosystem. This footprint is underpinned by DFA’s national coverage; since 2007, the company has deployed over 20,000 km of fibre infrastructure across major metros, secondary cities, and smaller towns, a footprint that many other providers cannot match.
E-commerce and digital services are another major driver. Online retail, fintech, streaming platforms and digital entertainment all generate massive volumes of data. Local data centres are also critical for maintaining governance and compliance over sensitive customer and operational data.
“Without sufficient capacity, South African businesses would face higher costs and risk degraded quality of service – which slows growth,” says Divall. “More importantly, the nation might find itself behind global competitors in the AI-economy race. DFA, as the country’s premium enterprise grade connectivity provider, is key to supplying the high-capacity data highways that are critical to success.”
“If you think of the future expansion to edge data centres that is certainly coming – inter-DC connectivity will be a critical component. The ability to have robust, high capacity links creating a network of data facilities will be the differentiator.”
AI’s expansion and the future of data centres
Looking ahead, where AI adoption will be a key driver of demand for both computing and data throughput, DFA anticipates that as businesses deploy more AI-driven applications, the need for low-latency, high-capacity connectivity will continue to grow.
DFA is actively expanding its offering to support this rapidly growing market, with its investments focusing on robust network solutions and high-performance connectivity between solution providers and data centres.
“Our strategy is to ensure that as the data-centre market expands, our network can meet the demands of AI workloads and digital businesses,” Divall concludes. “Our goal is to enable an ecosystem where data centres and AI converge to create value for South Africa.”
