Africa Data Centres adding 6MW capacity in Cape Town

Africa Data Centres, a business of pan-African technology group Cassava Technologies, has announced it is expanding its data center facility (CPT1) in Cape Town, South Africa, to add another 6MW of IT load, effectively doubling its current capacity in the city.

"This expansion by Africa Data Centres is in response to the increasing demand for co-location capacity in South Africa. Not only is Cape Town the second largest economy in South Africa, but it is also the de facto software and technology hub in Southern Africa," Hardy Pemhiwa, president and Group CEO of Cassava, said in a statement.

The company said it is seeing tremendous growth in the data center market in South Africa generally, as both national and international cloud and IT service providers seek to expand their footprints in the region.

The expansion sees three new halls in new areas on the current campus and was implemented through an up to $300 million loan from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).

The Cape Town facility previously provided 5.5MW of power, so with the new addition the facility will grow to 11.5MW.

The expansion adds 1,000 racks of white space (the space available for customers to lease) but the group said the physical site is significantly larger than that. It is made up of two more colocation data halls and one hyperscale hall.

"The additional halls are built in the cutting-edge modular design pioneered by Africa Data Centres, which enables rapid scalability and a modern design that allows the facility to be populated as and when required to suit the needs of the customer," the company explained.

Sustainable data centers

The Cape Town data center uses hybrid cooling technology capable of handling both air cooling and liquid cooling. Africa Data Centres claims it is one of the most efficient and sustainable data centers ever built in South Africa.

It is powered by renewable energy, has a water usage effectiveness rating of zero – due to no water consumption for the IT infrastructure – and has a strong power usage effectiveness rating, the company said.

The CPT1 facility is also using wheeled solar power, an innovation enabled through a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) signed in March last year with Distributed Power Africa, which is also part of Cassava Technologies.

Africa Data Centres claims to be the first company to successfully implement this solar wheeling technology in Africa, "marking it the continent's first project of its kind."

Power "wheeling" is a process of moving privately generated power to customers across national government-owned power grids. The idea is gaining traction in South Africa as a way to bridge energy shortfalls in the country.

Telecommunications operator Vodacom signed a virtual wheeling agreement with South African state-owned power utility Eskom in August 2023.

"As the demand for data continues to skyrocket across Africa, a continent where power supply is often intermittent, the need for reliable, cost-effective, and green power has never been more critical," added Finhai Munzara, interim CEO of Africa Data Centres.

Africa Data Centres claims its Cape Town facility is one of the most sustainable data centers ever built in South Africa. (Source: jcomp on Freepik)

Munzara said that by using renewable energy the CPT1 facility ensures consistent power supply and also supports sustainable operations, helping customers achieve their environmental goals.

Munzara touted Cape Town as an excellent location for colocation facilities due to its close proximity to many submarine cable landing stations.

The Cape Town facility also houses the Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX), which makes multi-region peering more accessible, efficient and easy to manage.

Pemhiwa said the expansion was also helped along by support from the Ministry of ICT for the Western Cape Provincial Government and the Western Cape Department of Economic Development.

Expansion plans across Africa

Besides the Cape Town facility, Africa Data Centres also has two data center facilities in Johannesburg, South Africa, and one each in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya.

According to Munzara, the Cape Town extension increases the capacity of the company's data centers in South Africa and it is an integral part of its investment plans to deliver several additional data facilities across the continent.

In June 2024, Africa Data Centres announced its plans to expand its data center capacity in South Africa, using a R2 billion (US$108 million) financing solution arranged by Rand Merchant Bank (RMB).

In September 2021, Africa Data Centres had promised a major expansion with the intention to build ten hyperscale data centers across Africa over the next two years – in a project it said was worth more than $500 million.

The ten countries were not named at the time, but it did show interest in expanding into the North African region in places like Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.

Data center competition heats up

Africa Data Centres faces competition in the African market where other operators have also been vocal about their expansion plans on the continent.

In May 2024, Raxio launched a new data center in Mozambique following its existing facilities in Uganda and Ethiopia.

At the time, Raxio Group CEO Robert Mullins told Connecting Africa that Raxio's planned data centers in Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola would all open by the end of the year and it was also close to starting construction on a data center in Tanzania.

Earlier this month, PAIX Data Centres announced the expansion of its facility in Accra, Ghana; while MainOne expanded its data center footprint in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in November 2023.

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Mobile operator Airtel Africa also launched its new data center business Nxtra by Airtel in December 2023, with plans for its first data center to be built in Lagos, Nigeria.

*Top image source: Africa Data Centres.

— Paula Gilbert, Editor, Connecting Africa