Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa to build a $100 million data center in Nigeria
Zimbabwean billionaire and businessman, Dr. Strive Masiyiwa is investing an amount of $100 million to build what is considered one of Africa’s largest data centers. This will be built in Lagos, Nigeria.
The facility is expected to boost capacity in the storage and easy access of data locally to help resolve issues relating to poor network and browsing experiences caused by far-fetched data centers, help introduce more cloud services in Africa, assist businesses, boost investment opportunities and many more.
“I am kicking off a new revolution in the next face of technology in Africa. What is important is not the data center but the technologies that will be unleashed in Nigeria because of this infrastructure; that is the big deal”. Dr. Masiyiwa was quoted
“A few years ago, Africa’s data center was just a single facility in Nairobi, Kenya. It was not a company, but as my team and I watched what was happening, we realized it should become a separate company. We hired experts from around the world, we brought them together. We then began to expand the business by inviting investors” he reportedly added.
The construction of the $100 million facility will be done by Africa Data Centers (ADC) listed as as a carrier-neutral data center company which is part of the Liquid Intelligent Technologies group owned by Dr. Strive Masiyiwa.
The data sector is considered a very lucrative one especially, looking at the increasing rate of smartphone and internet usage in Africa; statistics have it that, the continent’s data center market which is growing at 12% annual growth rate will hit $3 billion by 2025.
