The Spread of Data Centres in Africa’s Mid-tier Economies could Redress Imbalances   

A new generation of data centers are being built in Africa’s smaller economies, fueling a $5 billion market opportunity on the world’s fastest growing continent. Data centers, which house digital infrastructure such as servers and cables, enable faster connections and the ability to store the data of tens of millions of people. In doing so, they improve the experience of using online services such as banking and streaming movies. The emergence of local data centers has powered a surge in cloud-based computing in five of Africa’s largest economies — South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco — in the last five years. Now the number of data centers built in smaller African economies is surging as well, with up to $700 million of capital investment pouring in each year in the past two years, according to data from research firm Xalam Analytics which monitors the industry.

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