The buy and build platform will comprise of independently owned, carrier-neutral, data centres across key African markets.
The fast adoption of digital services and the explosion in mobile consumption is driving investors into Africa in what is the beginning of a ‘data rush’ to capitalise on the opportunities of a data centre boom.
Leading the pack in 2020 is private equity company Actis, which has plans to established a $250 million pan-African data centre platform.
The company revealed that the first of these investments are completed, with Actis taking a controlling stake in Nigeria based colocation business, Rack Centre.
Data Economy understands the deal with RackCentre to be Actis first investment as part of the data centre platform venture.
Nigeria is Africa’s second-largest data centre market – South Africa being the first – and provides a stepping-stone for the platform’s further expansion, according to Actis.
RackCentre owns and operates a data centre in Lagos, Nigeria. The investment into Rack Centre will fund a rapid expansion of the data centre, doubling the existing modular capacity and developing a data centre on the same premises, set to host a capacity in excess of 10MW.
“Actis is putting over $100 million in the Africa platform, and a key part of the investment goes into doubling our capacity in the next few months to 1.5MW IT power. This is the first step to expanding that to about 10MW in the 20,000 square metres of space we have in our data centre,” Ayotunde Coker, Managing Director of RackCentre told Data Economy.
He added: “That is the key task at hand. Of course, in time, we are looking at our other complementary expansion options.”
“Rack Centre is now at a key juncture and my team and I are excited about being part of the future growth.
