According to the US International Development Finance Corporation, Africa’s Data Center market, which currently accounts for just 1% of global available capacity, is expected to grow to $3 billion by 2025, building on a robust growth rate of more than 12% per year.

With the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the uptake of cloud and colocation services by businesses, West Africa is witnessing an acceleration in data center investments. These data centers are hosting global content and enabling local businesses with the growing Fintech scene in capitals such as Lagos and Accra. Yet the scale of the data center footprint continues to dwarf market potential as the majority of Africa’s data continues to be hosted outside the continent as a result of infrastructure deficiencies, high facility operations costs and security challenges.

Hosted by MainOne, the 2021 Africa Panel session at ITW  with the theme “Explore the growing Data Center ecosystem in West Africa”, featured leading data center operators across Africa including MainOne CEO, Funke Opeke; Rack Center CEO, Ayotunde Coker; CEO, Pan African Internet Exchange Data Centres (PAIX), Wouter van Hulten; and Stephane Duproz , CEO Africa Data Centre, and was moderated by Guy Zibi of Xalam Analytics.

The 2021 Africa Panel session at ITW brings together global players that have taken the bold step of deploying POPs in West Africa to find out why and engage leading players in the region to understand the unique opportunities and challenges they face in building the ecosystem in this part of the world.

Watch below: