Africa Data Centres (ADC) is increasing its hyperscale data centre capacity across its three local facilities by an additional 20MW, as it positions to claim a larger piece of SA’s data centre market.
According to the company, the expansion will enable it to provide a high standard of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre services. This will allow ADC to meet its clients’ growing demand for cloud computing and advanced artificial intelligence workloads.
ADC operates three South African facilities, in Midrand (JHB1), Centurion (JHB2) and Cape Town (CPT1). A fourth facility is under construction in Cape Town (CPT2) and is expected to go live in the short- to medium-term.
During an interview last week with ITWeb on the side-lines of the Africa Tech Festival 2024, in Cape Town, Finhai Munzara, interim CEO of ADC, explained the expansion will offer secure data centre services and interconnections. It will also meet enterprises’ growing demand for secure business-critical data storage.
“We’ve grown to hundreds of clients across the three data centres that rely on our services. They are a combination of cloud providers, internet service providers, financial services firms, retail industry firms, as well as hyperscalers,” he said.
“In our South African facilities, we have 30MW of capacity in total and we are building an extra 20MW. So, we should have about 50MW in total very soon. We are expanding both Johannesburg facilities, having added 10MW to the Midrand site about a year ago.”
In July, ADC announced it is extending its CPT1 facility in Cape Town, adding another 6MW of IT load, effectively doubling the facility’s current capacity.
In June, the firm secured R2 billion in funding, with plans to increase its data centre capacity in SA. The funding was facilitated through a bespoke financing solution arranged by Rand Merchant Bank.
According to Munzara, CPT2 is being built to ADC’s new standard modular design, premised on an edge design, to ensure rapid scalability and standardisation that enables the data centre to be populated as and when required.
ADC says it owns and operates Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities across Southern, East and West Africa.
The company forms part of fibre solutions provider Cassava Technologies Group. It operates across 31 countries − primarily in Eastern and Southern Africa – providing mobile operators, carriers, enterprise, media and content companies with high-speed connectivity solutions.
Across Africa, it operates data centres in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lagos, Nigeria. Last year, it announced plans to expand its portfolio in Kigali, Rwanda; Lome, Togo; and add a 30MW data centre in Accra, Ghana.
The firm’s expansion of its facilities comes as local and international data centre providers invest heavily in the South African market.
Digital Realty-owned Teraco, Vantage Data Centres, Open Access Data Centres and Equinix have all been expanding their data centre footprint in SA, while hyperscalers Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Azure have also built local data centre facilities.
Chinese-based cloud giant Alibaba Cloud recently entered the South African data centre market via a partnership with Telkom subsidiary BCX.
SA’s geographical position at the southern tip of the continent makes it a strategic hub for regional and international connectivity. It serves as a gateway to other African markets, as well as connecting Africa to Europe, the Americas and Asia.
According to Munzara, ADC’s expansion and construction projects have created hundreds of direct and indirect jobs across ADC’s ecosystem.
“There has been job creation during our construction period, where we are building all these data centres. Sometimes, at peak, we would have around 500 direct jobs at a single site, which is one area where we play our part in creating income opportunities and we are quite proud of that,” noted Munzara.
“We also track construction hours without injury, and so far, we have had three million hours where our workers have not been injured. We are also trying to minimise risks as we create jobs.”
Looking at ADC’s renewable energy strategy, Munzara points out that it signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with DPA Southern Africa.
The deal focuses on the establishment of a Free State-based solar farm that would wheel power to its facilities, as part ofADC’s commitment to sustainability.
Globally, green data centres are becoming increasingly prevalent, as firms support climate change mitigation efforts to meet their sustainability commitments. Google Cloud, Microsoft, Schneider Electric, Digital Realty and Amazon Web Services are among the data centre providers that have made strides in sustainable energy usage in their facilities.
“The first phase of our strategy involves constructing the 12MW solar infrastructure to power our Cape Town data centre, with subsequent phases extending to our Johannesburg data centres,” said Munzara.
“Our renewable strategy is heavily-geared towards South Africa and that’s largely because SA’s energy grid is carbon-intensive. We are looking to getting to a point where we are green as a data centre overall.
“What we've done in our Johannesburg sites is ensure we have solar panels across our parking ports and on our roof, to ensure we are generating as much capacity by ourselves as we can.”
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