The AI-driven 5IR is set to drive tremendous change and the emergence of ‘digital unicorns’ in Africa. Advanced data centres are underpinning this transformation.
This is according to Dr Ayotunde Coker, CEO of Open Access Data Centres (OADC), a WIOCC Group Company, Africa's leading provider of comprehensive, integrated core digital infrastructure solutions and managed network services.
Dr Coker says: “Global connectivity, subsea cables and massive data centres mean we now have a global fabric of availability of information and the level of compute that allows you to hold a huge amount of data, but also turn that data into reality in milliseconds.”
This progress signals the advent of a fifth industrial revolution, he says.
“AI has been around for 40 years, but this shift in global connectivity and computing capability is what's now giving us the ability to use generative AI to transform lives and livelihoods,” he says.
He notes that data centres and their supporting infrastructure provide the new capabilities that enable AI adoption.
“Three components must come together and have to be synthesised to provide the capability. First, the data centre itself. But data centres don't exist in silos – you also need the open access interconnectivity that enables access to the data. Therefore, within the data centres, you need interconnect ecosystems that allow really large, vibrant exchanges and peering of data across networks. The third component is the energy required to power the data centres,” he says.
Dr Coker says the WIOCC Group provides interconnectivity with open access wholesale hyperscale capability, open access data centres and complementary services.
“What we've done is we've put together a unique proposition that allows us to provide – at scale – a combination of open access data centre capability and connectivity, which we call Converged Open Digital Infrastructure,” he says.
He says OADC is building out its ability to meet the demands of AI-enabled organisations across Africa. “We are expanding our capacity in stages – a key development is a new flagship data centre in Lagos, Nigeria, the first stage towards a total critical IT load capacity of 24MW expected to be completed in mid-2026,” he says. The company is also upgrading its edge data centres across South Africa.
To accommodate requirements for AI, OADC is adapting its existing data centre architectures.
Dr Coker says: “Data centres will need to deal with increased density and the associated cooling requirements of AI. What's starting to emerge is optimising various data halls for different requirements, for example, enterprise computing, hyperscalers and high-density environments for AI. These AI environments might accommodate the back-end compute and pre-processing, while the latency sensitive functions move to the edge – closer to the point of use.”
He says: “We are finding a growing number of AI workloads coming into our data centres in South Africa, and so we are engineering and modifying them to enable us to provide that kind of workload density.”
To address the changing power requirements data centres will have to support AI, data centre operators like OADC work to reduce power consumption and incorporate alternative energy, he says.
“It’s a constant evolution and engagement with the utilities to get the levels of power that are required. At the same time, environmental impact has become a top priority. So we need to make sure that the usage of power is as optimised and sustainable as possible,” Dr Coker says.
“Data centres account for around 1% to 2% of global energy use. This figure is rising, but the key thing is to make it more efficient and greener, and the industry is pushing to do that. For instance, at our Durban data centres, we have just announced 330 kilowatts of solar power to provide substitution for the use of utility power.”
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