Digital infrastructure company Equinix is, according to a number of news outlets, planning to invest US$390 million in building data centres in Africa over the next five years.
A Bloomberg report, published last week, suggests that the investment will focus primarily on South Africa and the west of the continent, although Sandile Dubem, managing director for South Africa, has indicated that the company is also exploring opportunities in East Africa and may spend more to build or acquire there. With this in mind the company has a number of studies under way to assess opportunities.
The company first entered Africa with its acquisition of West African data centre and connectivity solutions provider MainOne in 2021. This took a while to complete. Indeed, we reported that Equinix had finally completed its acquisition of MainOne for an enterprise value of US$320 million, in April 2022.
The deal added three operational data centres to Equinix's portfolio, in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire. Another Nigerian data centre opened in April 2022.
As we reported at the time, Equinix announced plans for a Johannesburg IBX data centre in December 2022. Construction began in 2023. It will have 4MW of IT capacity in its first phase, eventually reaching 20MW and more than 9,290 square metres of colocation space. It is expected to launch later this year.
