Morocco will be a host for a new development plan to expand data storage in Africa.
In a press release, The South African-based data storage company African Data Center announced it is currently developing plans to construct state-of-the-art “hyperscale data centers” in several African countries. The “carrier-neutral co-location” data centers will be constructed over the next two years and will include several North African countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.
Africa Data Center plans on bringing the project to a total of ten countries by the time the project is completed.
The Data Centers will be interconnected via cloud software and aim to revolutionize the tech industry in Africa. Africa Data Center CEO Stephane Duproz revealed that the company has “already begun to acquire land in these countries and plan to roll-out very quickly” in order to accommodate the rapid increase of data storage needs in Africa.
Duproz stated that the company has continued “examining Africa’s growth trajectory” in order to find the most strategic locations for the massive data centers. He assured the planned centers would “offer a reliable, resilient, secure and interconnected base.”
The planned data center project has a current price tag of $500 million and is being funded by the company, in addition to “leading development finance institutions and multilateral organizations.”
Modern businesses are requiring increasing amounts of data storage to keep up with the increasingly digital nature of global commerce. As such, data storage has become an integral part of most companies’ needed services in the modern age. Currently, the industry is dominated by multinationals such as Google and Amazon.
But with the rise of Africa as an emerging economic sphere of influence alongside improving technology capabilities, the introduction of a continental data solution independent of Western controlled companies will be sure to revolutionize the future of technical capabilities and businesses in Africa as a whole.