Page 67 - SAMENA Trends - January 2021

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

Five major hyper-scale
cloud providers are found
to have an active interest in
Africa, including Microsoft
Azure, AWS, Google Cloud,
Whale Cloud and Huawei

Cloud. Both AWS and
Microsoft have expanded
beyond South Africa and
Alibaba plans to expand
from there into other Sub-
Saharan African countries
over the next 12-18 months

Clouds gather over Africa
The availability of more data centre
space is paving the way for the arrival of
hyperscale cloud providers to the region.
Five major hyper-scale cloud providers are
found to have an active interest in Africa,
including Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google
Cloud, Whale Cloud and Huawei Cloud.
Both AWS and Microsoft have expanded
beyond South Africa and Alibaba plans to
expand from there into other Sub-Saharan
African countries over the next 12-18
(Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ghana, over last 5 years and looks set to improve months
Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, further in the years ahead – with several of
South Africa and Zambia), with 6 more the region’s planned next-generation data The table below summarises the local
coming on stream shortly (DRC, Ethiopia, centres are being built to Level IV standard. cloud presence of the five major players:
Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and Zimbabwe).

The report finds that not only are there
significant investments being made in new
data centre facilities, but the overall quality
of data centre infrastructure is improving
too.

The quality and operational expertise
of carrier-neutral data centres in Sub-
Saharan Africa has improved a great deal
The quality and operational

expertise of carrier-
neutral data centres in
Sub-Saharan Africa has
improved a great deal over
last 5 years and looks set
to improve further in the
years ahead...

67 JANUARY 2021