Kenya to build regional data center

A new data center being built by the Kenyan government to serve East and Central Africa is expected to ease the region's reliance on Europe and America for data backup services.

The construction of data centers by African governments, mobile service providers and foreign companies comes in the wake of continued take-up of IT by many companies in the region, which has caused an increase in demand for safer data storage facilities.

The Rwandan government was the first to approve and construct a data center, expected to be operational by the end of this month. South Africa's largest mobile telecom service provider, Vodacom, is setting up two new data centers in Nigeria and in the East Africa region. Once the two centers become operational, Vodacom will have three data centers in the region, including one already in use in South Africa.

Vodacom is seeking to cement its presence in Africa's data business while the Kenyan government wants to be the regional center of data business. In Rwanda, the construction of the center is being carried out by a Swedish company, Coromatic, at a cost of more than US$5 million.

Unlike Rwanda, the Kenyan government has awarded a local ICT company, Kenya Data Network (KDN), to construct the center that will cost more than US$8 million and is expected to be the biggest data center in the East African region. The center is being set up by the Kenyan government in conjunction with KDN under a public-private partnership arrangement. The center is expected to provide multiple services including disaster recovery, housing of national and international exchange, and teleport facilities.

KDN will carry out predevelopment planning, construction and the setting up of infrastructure, maintenance and management of security-related works, as well as acquisition of technology solutions and expertise.

The center is designed to provide data recovery and host mission-critical computer systems with full redundancy systems, according to KDN CEO Kai Wolf.

Noticing the opportunity for data business in the region, the International Consortium for Organizational Resilience -- an information technology company based in the U.S. -- and Kenya-based software company Openworld Ltd earlier this year set up a

training shop in Kenya, in a bid to train professionals who can set up and operate data centers.  

The World Bank has provided US$24 million to facilitate Rwanda's construction of its center and the country's plan to connect to the regional undersea cables running under the Indian Ocean, including Seacom, Teams and the EASSY project, in order to address connectivity problems.

The Japanese telecommunication carrier Kokusai Denshin Denwa (KDDI) has also announced the launch of its first data center in Africa.

KDDI last week said the center, based in Cape Town, meets global standards and will provide safe data storage to clients. The site is fully equipped with a multiple-route power supply, uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and a backup generator in case of events such as blackouts, according to a statement from the company. The company is also building another data center in Johannesburg, South Africa, that will be operational by 2010.