Intelligent Data Centres Issue 08 | Page 45

FEATURE THERE ARE VARIOUS FACTORS THAT LOCAL AFRICAN BUSINESSES SHOULD CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING TO BUILD OR PURCHASE SPACE IN A DATA CENTRE. ith continued and sustained growth in Internet penetration and connectivity, some of the foundations begin to be in place for a deeper and more meaningful Digital Transformation in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile penetration reached 44% in 2018, catalysing an uptake in demand for data for both business and personal use. With 41% of the population under the age of 15, the region is also home to a market of digital natives hungry for modern technological services – this, combined with the availability of increasingly affordable smartphones and mobile data plans, means demand for all things digital in the region is on the rise. Building data centres that can cope with these rising requirements is critical to driving this Digital Transformation. With new technologies such as IoT, cloud and content delivery networks fuelling both consumer and business demand for high-velocity, high- availability services, a more localised IT and data infrastructure is essential. www.intelligentdatacentres.com Africa has been largely stymied by a lack of adequate data centre infrastructure. Existing infrastructure is not equipped to cater to ever-growing server space, power and cooling requirements. By building a modern, state-of-the-art data centre infrastructure, Africa can benefit not only from improved digital services, but also significant socioeconomic growth. The role of data centres in economic and social growth The economic value of the Internet in Africa is unsurprisingly strong, with research from McKinsey claiming that the Internet can increase productivity on the continent for a multitude of sectors, including education, healthcare, financial services, agriculture, retail and government. According to the Internet Society, the Internet contributes to 3.7% of developed countries’ GDP on average. In African countries, however, this lies at just 1.1%. Building and utilising local data centres is vital to boosting this figure and driving economic growth. For instance, the Internet Society identifies a lack of local content infrastructure and content delivery networks (CDN) as a key barrier to achieving wider Internet use. Hosting content in local data centres significantly reduces the latency and cost of content delivery, which will ultimately improve its accessibility for local communities. Capitalising on opportunities such as these is vital as the mobile CDN market is set to become a major driver of data traffic growth in Africa, with CDN traffic predicted to exceed 70% of total online traffic in the next five years. Modern data centres in Africa will not only help meet these needs, but also serve as hubs to connect the region to the wider global data economy; facilitating economic and social development. A growing colocation data centre market will also facilitate job creation and cultivate local partners, such as cloud service and other third-party service providers who will be able to deliver higher quality, more reliable services to their customers from within modern data centres. For instance, new data centres in South Africa alone are predicted to create over 100,000 jobs. Despite the dramatic rise in both terrestrial and mobile connectivity over the past 10 years, broader Digital Transformation in As demand for data centres rises, data centre operators will inevitably require more staff and create more IT training Issue 08 45