Data centre boom in South Africa

South Africa’s data centre market is growing rapidly, with providers spending billions to expand their services in the country.

Data centre providers like Teraco, Africa Data Centres, Open Access Data Centres, and Vantage Data Centres are working to build bigger and more advanced data centres.

Teraco kicked off the carrier-neutral revolution in the country, opening the doors for prominent international cloud computing providers like Huawei and Microsoft, and eventually Amazon and Google.

Recent developments in the data centre market include providers breaking ground on new facilities, building renewable power stations to supply their facilities, and completing data centre builds.

Providers like those mentioned above have invested billions of rands in the South African data centre market.

Some of their latest achievements and developments in the country are listed below.

Teraco secures grid allocation for 120MW solar plant

Teraco — South Africa’s largest data centre provider — announced that it had secured its first grid capacity allocation from Eskom on 21 February 2024.

The grid allocation means the provider can connect its 120MW solar facility to the national grid and wheel the power generated across Eskom and municipal networks to its facilities nationwide.

Once complete, the 120MW solar farm will generate approximately 338,000MWh of electricity each year.

Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo said the allocation is a significant step towards the company achieving its renewable energy goals.

“It is also only the first phase of our longer-term renewable energy commitment,” he said.

“In South Africa, we have various energy challenges, and this presents an incredible opportunity to meet our near-term renewable energy goals while adding additional power capacity to a generation-constrained grid.”

The company partnered with JUWI Renewable Energies South Africa and Subsolar to develop the solar plant.

Samuel Erwin, chief financial officer at Teraco, revealed that the company had secured R11.2 billion ($583 million) in funding to assist with its renewable energy plans in late January 2024.

Just less than half of the loan financing is earmarked to build out the company’s solar capacity and data centres.

Africa Data Centres launches free remote peering and breaks ground on second Cape Town facility

On 24 January 2024, Africa Data Centres announced that it had broken ground on a second facility in Cape Town, which it expects to be operational by mid-2024.

“Cape Town is a thriving city and the second largest economy in South Africa. It is regarded as the country’s IT and software hub, and we are seeing significant growth in the data centre market in the region,” said Africa Data Centres CEO Tesh Durvasula.

“We built and operate the first hyperscale colocation data centre in the city, which already houses a number of global providers alongside major South African enterprises and government, and this second facility will add capacity to the region, and redundancy too.”

When completed, the data centre will have 12,000 square metres of white space and an IT load of 20MW.

Earlier in January 2023, the data centre provider and INX-ZA launched free remote peering, letting customers leverage any network service provider’s infrastructure to reach exchange points.

The partnership brings free peering from ADC’s facilities to the Johannesburg and Cape Town Internet Exchanges. Africa Data Centres says the offering makes multi-region peering more accessible, efficient, and easier to manage.

“Having this ability not only reduces capital expenditure and complexity. Deployments can be achieved in a matter of minutes rather than months,” said Durvasula.

“Using a remote peering provider or organisations in every industry can add scalable bandwidth capacity on flexible terms to access a wide range of IXs.”

Open Access Data Centres launches Isando facility phase 2

In December 2023, Open Access Data Centres (OADC) revealed that the first phase of its facility in Isando, Johannesburg, was 90% full and announced that it was preparing to launch its second phase.

“Physical work is due to begin on-site in December of this year with the project — which is a larger deployment than the first phase, comprising an additional 4MW of IT load and a further 600 racks — due to be completed within the first quarter of next year,” said Darren Bedford, group chief business development officer at WIOCC Group.

Bedford added that the company is prepared to keep the facility powered, with measures in place to deal with one of South Africa’s biggest threats to business — load-shedding.

“We have put a variety of measures in place, including bulk diesel storage and contracts with multiple fuel suppliers — and this is something that goes not only for the Isando operation but for all our edge and core data centres around the country,” he said.

Vantage starts construction on its second facility in Johannesburg

In December 2022, Vantage Data Centres announced that it had broken ground on a second campus in Isando, Johannesburg (JNB2).

The facility’s first building will provide 20MW of critical IT load across 33,000 square metres of hall space. The data centre is approximately 17km from Vantage’s JNB1 facility.

“South Africa continues to be a cornerstone for Vantage’s EMEA growth outside of continental Europe,” said Vantage Data Centers’ EMEA president, Antoine Boniface.

“Investing in a second campus is a testament to our commitment to the region and our customers who have business requirements to be in this high-demand market.”

The provider says the campus’ first building will be operational by mid-2024. Vantage is repurposing an existing warehouse to build the two-story data centre.

The facility will offer renewable energy options through Vantage’s Power Purchase Agreement with SolarAfrica to limit its carbon footprint and maintain energy-efficient operations while minimising water use.

Customers can also choose to use power provided by the Ekurhuleni Municipality, combined with an on-site, high-voltage substation.