The mass adoption of business software and the proliferation of smartphones is leading to soaring demand for data centres across the continent, reports the Financial Times. Capacity has doubled over the last three years and investors are rushing in. The localisation of data storage is important in increasing connection speeds, which the paper describes as ‘currently the lowest and costliest on earth’, but many countries also mandate the local hosting of local data. South Africa currently accounts for over half of all the continent’s data storage but other key markets are Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. Microsoft opened its first African data centres last year, with Amazon planning to follow suit later in 2020.
The mass adoption of business software and the proliferation of smartphones is leading to soaring demand for data centres across the continent
- Theme:
- Infrastructure and Spectrum: 5G and next generation networks, Investment
- Region:
- Middle East & Africa
- Series:
- Regulatory Watch
