Africa continues to witness digital transformation at a very rapid pace as seen with the proliferation of technology in all verticals of the economy from healthcare, agriculture to financial services.
- •Over the past decade, this transformation has been a key driver of societal development and transformation.
- •At the heart of this evolution lie data centers, pivotal hubs powering Africa’s digital revolution.
- •As of 2021, the continent boasted over 400 data centers, a number steadily rising in response to escalating demands for digital infrastructure.
A few weeks back, The Kenyan Wall Street made a visit to Mombasa Road to IX Africa, the latest entrant into the data center space in the region. The visit culminated in a chat with Snehar Shah, CEO IXAFRICA, who was previously CEO of Moringa School.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation with him.
IXAfrica is a marvel, atleast from an industrial layer. How did this all came together. When did the works commence and how much investment went into this project?
IX Africa was founded by Guy Willner who is a veteran in the Data Centre industry having set up large facilities in UK/Europe which got sold to Equinix, the No.1 player globally.
Works commenced a couple of years ago when we acquired this 5 acre site on Mombasa Road from the previous owners of Schneider and commissioned the 22.5MW facility, the largest in East Africa. A $50m investment was secured by Helios, the largest Africa focused Private Equity Firm.
Being the latest entrant into the market, gives you the advantage of new innovations. From an infrastructure and technology perspective, what are some of the advancements you have at this facility?
Our Tier 3 plus facility is “hyperscaler ready” meaning it has been to very stringent specifications of Big Techs like AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle with Uptime of 99.999%. Our Data Centre is very comparable to the latest large facilities you would find in the developed world using the latest technologies of overhead busbar cabling, adiabatic free air cooling and N+1 configuration using very high quality equipment.
We are also designed to service the high power consuming AI chips and SPUs such as NVIDIA which can have dense power consumption of as much as 50kW+ per rack.
You did mention that you are keen to work with hyperscalers in this space and we did see massive capacity in this facility. I am curious, how are you addressing challenges of scalability and efficiency in your operations and how can these target customers adopt the IX Africa advantage for their businesses?
It is not a question of if but when the Hyperscalers come to East Africa. We are some 5-7 years behind South Africa which currently has a capacity of 350MW and growing. As companies continue the migration to cloud, there are more and more demands for the Cloud to be hosted locally due to Data Sovreignity and Latency requirements.
When walking around, it impressive to see some of the innovating cooling and power management solutions you have employed. Please speak how this feeds to customer needs.
Compared to other local data centres who may have a power efficiency factor (PUE) of 2x, our facility is designed for a PUE of 1.25 meaning it is much more efficient and ESG compliant.
We use latest technologies such a adiabatic free air cooling which is well suited to the lower average temperatures in a city like Nairobi. Our Power redundancy solutions are also very capital efficient where we deploy distributed power solutions without compromising our standards of uptime.
You mention power efficiency. Sustainability is a major theme in the digital infrastructure space including data centers. What are some measures you have adopted to hit those hallmarks?
First of all we are blessed that Kenya has 92% renewable energy generated power and is the 8th largest producer of Geothermal energy behind Iceland and Scandenavia. We also have around 98% of grid uptime on average during the year and having our electricity delivered by two independent commercial grade 11 KVA lines makes our reliance on diesel generators minimal.
We have also deployed Lithium Ion Phosphate batteries for the UPS back up. In addition we have a philosophy of “Buy Kenyan, Build Kenyan” where many of our Switchgear are manufactured locally by Schneider and our building materials are sourced locally as much as possible.
From a business strategy standpoint, are there any plans for geographical or capacity expansion in your data center operations? How do you see the role of data centers evolving in the next decade especially on the African continent and how do you plan to emerge as the market leader?
We are at the tip of the iceberg in East Africa for the Data Centre deployments and there is an opportunity for Kenya to become a hub for the EAC with our globally comparable Data Protection regulations. At IX Africa we have announced our second facility in Limuru as part of the Tilisi Industrial Park with a design of 53MW of Power. Helios also has a continent wide Digital Infrastructure Strategy with the acquisition of Maroc Data Centre (MDC) in Morocco.
You have had extensive experience as a business leader in the region and continent, with your latest as CEO Moringa School. How does it all come together? And how does it impact the future of tech in Africa?
I have been lucky to work in the different parts of the tech ecosystem, having trained as an Electronic Engineer from Imperial College, London and qualified as a Chartered Accountant form PwC and a Chartered Financial Analyst. I started my career in telecoms and Mobile Money to having rolled out Telecom Towers infrastructure across Africa to deploying solar powered small home lighting and Satellite TV Systems to 300,000+ households in five African countries and recently developed tens of thousands of tech talent and placed into local and remote jobs.
I have developed expertise in scaling business and riding the technological revolutions that have happened over the past few decades. I am optimistic that this is the decade of Data Centres in Africa!
