On the one hand, the headline growth in digital adoption across Africa, whether measured as penetration and usage of social media, electronic payments, digital content and communications or enterprise cloud, is dramatic. On the other hand, there are multiple examples of data centres that have been built in recent years that are lying largely empty, with lacklustre fill rates, despite having been built to a decent physical standard. It is becoming clear to these players and their investors that there is a great deal more to successful execution of data centre investments in Africa than simply finding land and power.
The pressures on weaker operators are intensifying. The extent to applications are increasingly response time and latency-sensitive is growing, whether consumer-centric activities such as online gaming (a major growth area around the world) or AI-related applications and analytics for enterprises and consumers alike. Low latency in this context is not about having diverse fibre connections from a bunch of network operators, but rather about the density of connectivity together with the amount of peering and traffic exchange that is happening in a particular location. This all comes down to communities and ecosystems and to generate and nurture them. The most valuable data centre campuses on the planet have succeeded in building these communities, which represent the largest barrier to competitive entry of them all.