Massive Opportunities for Data Centre Investments Exist in Nigeria and Across Africa

As the conversation on the impact of digitalisation across various industries, takes centre stage at business and intellectual gatherings globally, digital- age law firms like Duale Ovia and Alex-Adedipe and a few other TMT experts are at the forefront of driving the discourse across the globe.

Adeniyi Duale and Leke Alex-Adedipe were in London at the 8th TMT Finance Africa 2017, alongside more than 50 Corporate Executives from Africa’s largest TMT companies including MTN, Orange, Liquid Telecom, Millicom,

American Tower Corp, Jumiah, Airtel Africa, SEACOM and Helios Investment Partners, to discuss investment and growth strategies for Africa’s TMT (Technology Media and Telecom) sector.

Discussing opportunities for investment into vertical services, key actors in TMT examined the huge potential in areas such as B2B services, payments and financial services, and ‘owning as much of the wallet as possible’. Areas around media, content delivery and digital services were also noted as key areas of focus.

DOA partner, Adeleke Alex-Adedipe, who chaired the Enterprise Cloud & Data Centres Panel at the event, disclosed that Africa was the new frontier for data centres and cloud services investments despite its regulatory, financial and economic challenges.

Taking a critical look at the development of the data centre market in Africa, other panel members which included, Ayotunde Coker, Managing Director, Rack Centre; Michael Tobin OBE, an Industry Entrepreneur; Amine Kandil, CEO & Founder of N+ONE Datacenters and Ranjith Cherickel, CEO & Founder of icolo.io. discussed issues traversing data centre operators, investors and service providers.

The considered opportunities for investment across Africa; the development of data centre markets in Africa; finance available for building and expansion; the most appropriate data centre models for the region; as well as the growth of cloud-based services and how it impacts Demand and Investment strategies for greenfield projects and developing markets.

It was noted that whilst South Africa appears to be experiencing some investment in this regard, Nigeria would be the next stop, despite the obvious challenges.

“There is massive room for investment in Africa and equally huge opportunities for existing data centres across Africa,” Panelists agreed.

In the same vein, investors are confident about the market.