The Government of Burkina Faso has launched two micro data centers to support public sector workloads.

As reported by Developing Telecoms and revealed by the Ministry of Digital Transition, Posts and Electronic Communications via Facebook, the two data centers have a total storage capacity of 3PB, 105.6TB of memory, and 28,800 CPU cores.

The data centers, both located in Ouagadougou, provide government departments with access to more than 7,000 virtual machines (VMs). According to the Ministry, this is a ten times increase on the existing capacity currently available in the country.

Each ministry within the government will have between 100 and 300 VMs for the deployment of its digital platforms.

The exact size of the data centers has not been provided.

The project cost around 16 billion FCFA ($29 million) and is hoped to see savings of 30 billion FCFA ($54.47m) over five years with the reduced reliance on international infrastructure for hosting government platforms.

According to the Ministry, the data centers are "an intermediate step towards the construction of a national big data center, aimed at repatriating all public administration and private sector digital data currently housed outside the country."

The micro facilities are being managed by "national competencies."

The two data centers were inaugurated by Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo. Speaking at the event, he said: "These data centers are an act of sovereignty and an essential milestone in building a modern state, master of its choices and tools." He added: "Housing our data outside of our territory is like giving up some part of our self-determination. Burkina Faso can no longer accept it."

Ouédraogo has told the government that the data centers should now be "the single base" for public platforms and has instructed them to repatriate all data housed abroad or in private data centers.

The two micro data centers are one of 12 digital transformation projects the Government of Burkina Faso is undergoing. Another is the launch of a national data center, which is aimed to be completed by 2028. Details about the size of this upcoming facility were not provided.

In addition to the data centers, Nezien Associates has been selected to establish a Network Operations Center (NOC) building in Ouagadougou. This project will also be financed by the Burkina Faso Ministry of Digital Transition, Posts and Electronic Communications, with construction aimed to be completed in October 2026. According to the Ministry, the NOC will "have the main tasks of the centralized supervision of the national backbone network, securing cyberspace, operation of data centers, as well as maintenance and protection of critical digital infrastructures of the state."

In May 2025, the government revealed it would establish 800 telecom towers in the country.

Burkina Faso is a country in West Africa, and Ouagadougou is the country's capital city. It has a limited data center footprint, with DataCenterPlatform listing four operators in the country - MDENP, Virtix, Alink Telecom, and IPSys Telecom. Consulting and management firm Essor Services previously planned a data center in the country powered by a waste-to-energy plant.