The 400 rack Raxio Kinshasa facility will be the DRC's first carrier neutral, Tier III data centre and was announced as the government's National Digital Plan - Horizon 2025 was unveiled.
Set to be commissioned in Q2 next year, it will offer an optimised environment for IT equipment in a facility that Raxio said is consistent with “metro-edge” principles. It will be fully equipped in a 99.982% uptime environment, and customers will be able to cross connect with local and international carriers, as well as other customers, in specially designed meet-me rooms.
It will be followed with additional facilities in the country "in the coming years", including a second in Kinshasa and one in Lubumbashi, located in the Katanga region.
Robert Mullins, president of Raxio Group said: “Internet traffic continues to grow exponentially in the DRC, with a doubling of daily traffic in the last year alone. Across the digital infrastructure spectrum we are seeing significant new investment to improve connectivity, the digital backbone, availability and access to content in the country.
"We are delighted to do our part and to announce our decision to be moving forward with the DRC’s first Tier III carrier-neutral data centre. Our platform of data centres will provide a critical and missing part of the country’s digital infrastructure, needed to support the country’s digital growth with affordable, high quality, co-location environments. Our data centres will facilitate internet traffic amongst content providers locally and internationally and make the internet experience faster, more resilient, and more affordable for all digital users.”
Raxio has a data centre in Kampala, Uganda, and construction started on a second – in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – earlier this year. The company expects to complete "up to 10-12" data centre investments across Africa, "to meet the increased demand for high quality local storage and data hosting in the region".
