Raxio Group has begun construction of its data center at the ICT Park in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The pan-African data centre developer and operator announced the country’s first private carrier neutral colocation facility built to Uptime’s Tier III specifications in October 2020. The company expects construction to be complete by the end of 2021.
UK firm Future-tech has been appointed as the lead consultant, with Yema Architecture working as the local architect to manage design localisation, permitting, and construction supervision. The facility will initially accommodate an IT-capacity of 1.5MW with the possibility of expanding to 3MW as demand grows.
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Ethiopa gets a gaggle of new data centers
“After extensive design development, we are excited to put a spade in the ground and begin construction of what we expect to be our first of several facilities in Ethiopia,” said Robert Mullins, President of Raxio Group.
“We have kept our customers, both inside and outside Ethiopia, at the heart of our design process and are building a facility to accommodate the expected demand surge over the coming years for truly world-class digital infrastructure in the country. This also marks a big milestone for the industry: Raxio’s data centre will support the growth of the IT sector and will be a catalyst for highly skilled job creation in Ethiopia.”
Construction on a hyperscale facility from Wingu.Africa is also underway on a neighbouring plot at the Ethio ICT Park.
Established in 2018, Raxio Group is part of the US-based Roha Group investment firm. The company currently has a data center in Uganda outside Kampala, and recently announced plans to construct a data center in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and plans to have 10-12 data centers on the continent by 2023.
Though data centers in the continent have doubled since 2016, resources are tightly concentrated in South Africa, which has some two-thirds of capacity. A recent report from The African Data Centres Association (ADCA) and Xalam Analytics claimed Africa needs 1,000MW and 700 facilities to meet growing demand and bring the rest of the continent onto level terms with the capacity and density of South Africa.
