Japan has agreed to provide grant aid worth up to 2.3 billion yen (~$16m) to Cambodia for its National Data Center and government digitization plan.
The grant will go towards the equipment and construction necessary for the data center, which will be used by the Cambodian government to support the digitalization of the country's administrative services.
The meeting was held between Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kamikawa Yoko, and Sok Chenda Sophea, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Cambodia.
Ground was broken on the National Data Center in July 2023, and was estimated to cost $30 million. The Phnom Penh data center is expected to launch in 2025.
Cambodia announced its Cambodia Digital Government Policy 2022-2035 in January 2022, a program that will see the Government of Cambodia fully digitize its operations by 2035. The first stage of this will be for multiple Digital Revolution Units to be established by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications by 2024.
The lack of a national data center was noted in the policy document: "Another weakness is the lack of a national data center for storing data and providing computing resources, while all ministries and institutions have almost no infrastructure and technical capacity for ensuring digital security."
Thus far, Cambodia has a very small data center market. May 2023 saw ByteDC launch a 3MW facility in the capital, Phnom Penh.
Also agreed at the Japan-Cambodia summit was a grant of up to 1 billion yen ($6.9m) for the development of a Digital Management System for water supply facilities in the Metropolitan area.
