Emma Okonji 

Rack Centre, a carrier neutral data centre operator, hosting several international, regional and local clients, has built its new Tier III data centre in Nigeria with IT power capacity of 12 megawatt, covering a white space of 3240sqm.

The facility has IT rooms of six data halls each of 2mw IT load and 24 kw rack density, alongside four Meet-Me-Rooms.

Speaking about its economic impact on the Nigerian economy and the West African economy, during a press conference in Lagos recently to showcase the data centre, the Chief Sales Marketing Officer, Rack Centre, Folu Aderibigbe, said the new data centre facility would boost Nigeria’s data sovereignty, enhance digital transformation, and enable Nigeria to have national control over data generated, stored and processed within the country. He also said the facility would significantly reduce operational costs for business owners that deal with data storage and processing.

“In terms of data sovereignty, the facility will help to keep data in Nigeria, thereby reducing capital flight to host data abroad, because most times before now you had to spend money in foreign currency to be able to get access to cloud applications. It will also help to reduce latency in terms of providing quicker transaction time for businesses, and it will also help to provide some form of reliability to businesses, including resilience, among others. So basically having put the facility in place, we are helping businesses to reduce operational costs, and increase productivity of both individuals and businesses,” Aderibigbe said.

CEO of Rack Centre, Lars Johannisson, said Rack Centre remained the best connected data centre in Western Africa, and Nigeria today, with an uptime which is unprecedented and un-comparable, which is 100 per cent.
“We will continue to build on our legacy, which is People, Products and Processes.

The new facility that we are commissioning, which is LGS2, is a significant step for us. Our LGS1 facility had 1.5 megawatt installed, but in the new LGS2 facility, we have installed12 megawatt on top of that. Increasing our capacity from 1.5 to 12 megawatt, means that we are establishing ourselves as hyperscaler-AI ready data center in Nigeria, and we are essentially doubling the existing capacity of data centre in Nigeria. With the commissioning of our LGS2 facility, we’re doubling the installed base in Nigeria,” Johannisson said.  

Giving reasons why Rack Centre had to double its installed capacity in Nigeria, Johannisson said: “We have a firm belief in the operations in Nigeria since 2013. Again, we have a firm belief in the growth fundamentals in Nigeria. Cloudification and digitalisation are not just our buzzwords, because they are real.

“When we look at the IT penetration in Nigeria, it still hovers around 48 per cent, but it’s growing every single year. The user behavior in Nigeria is not different compared to other locations. So we see the growth enabler in Nigeria.”

Speaking about the growth potential of data centre in Nigeria, Johannisson said: “Out of all data entres that exist in the world, two per cent exist in Africa. Out of the two per cent in Africa, one per cent is located in South Africa, while the other one per cent is located in the remaining 43 countries on the African continent, which signifies massive growth potential of data centre in Nigeria and the rest of Africa.”

 Chief Operating Officer, Rack Centre, Ezekiel Egboye, said the new facility was designed and built in readiness for the future, which according to him, is really around Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Speaking about sustainability, Egboye said: “We as a business, we are very conscious of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) related pollutions and that has driven our energy mix from the start. Clear processes, clear design, and clear implementation have been really thought about in what we’ve built in Rack Centre today. We started with diesel, which is now very expensive and also not environmentally friendly. Gas is the way to go now. We’re currently running gas and we’re bringing in solar to bring that into the mix to give us a clear path into our sustainability journey. That also will be the first in sub-Saharan Africa, where Rack Centre is operating with three sources of power to drive efficiency.”

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