Oracle Penetrates Africa With The Opening Of Its First African Data Centre

Software company, Oracle is joining the race to tap into Africa’s virgin land for technological development as it recently opened its first ever cloud region in Africa.

The world’s largest database management company built the cluster of data centres in South Africa, following in the steps of other global players like Microsoft and Amazon who already have data centres on the African continent.

The new data centre will be Oracle’s 37^th cloud region globally, with the company planning to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of this year, having opened 7 additional cloud regions in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, France, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. 

The Regional managing director for Middle East and Africa, Cherian Varghese, told Reuters that the South-African data centre will be the only one Oracle plans to build on the continent as the company has no plans for more African data centres in 2022 but there is a possibility of it continuing the African initiative in 2023, as the company explores areas like West Africa.

The new data centre built in Johannesburg is envisioned to assist customers seamlessly migrate IT workloads and data platforms to the cloud or build new cloud native applications. 

“Public cloud services adoption is accelerating at a CAGR of 25% year on year between 2020 and 2025 in Sub-Saharan Africa, and IDC projects that the growth momentum will continue,” Mark Walker, associate vice president, Sub-Saharan Africa, International Data Corporation (IDC) said.

According to Walker, about 60 percent of organizations in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are on the move to adopt the cloud technology over the next 12 to 18 months, quoting a recent survey by his firm, the International Data Corporation (IDC). This means the organizations will require the services of the data centers close by to experience the lowest levels of latency. It is on the aegis of this that Oracle and other global players actively positioned themselves for this opportunity.

It would be recalled that a US-based internet connectivity firm, Equinix Inc in December 2021 acquired a West African connectivity and data solutions company, MainOne for a whopping $320 million, with the deal seeing Equinix penetrating the West African market, as part of its mandate to become an African carrier neutral digital infrastructure company.

It would also be recalled that in October last year, Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, Africa Data Centres, opened a new 10MW data centre facility in Lagos, Nigeria.

With Africa latching on the global technological advancement with major tech firms investing on the continent, it is hoped that these recent announcements will signal increasing digital literacy in the African population.