The Raxio Group today announced that it is establishing and investing in ‘Raxio Kinshasa’, the first in a series of state-of-the-art, privately owned, carrier-neutral, data centers in the DRC.
The new data center is set to be commissioned in Q2 2022, Raxio Kinshasa will offer its customers an optimised environment for their IT equipment in a state-of-the-art facility built consistent with “metro-edge” principles. It will be fully equipped with industry best in technology, security, caging, AC/DC power compatibility and redundancy in a 99.982% uptime environment.
Customers will be able to cross-connect with local and international carriers and other customers in specially designed meet-me rooms. By co-locating in Raxio’s facility, customers will benefit from a “shared infrastructure” model, and substantially reduce their operational and capital costs while improving application performance and flexibility.
This announcement comes as the government outlined its goals to digitally transform the DRC through a “National Digital Plan – Horizon 2025”, highlighting the need for the establishment and modernisation of infrastructure, such as secure data centers, broadband infrastructure, and access to ICT related incentives. Connectivity in the country is also set for step-change improvements in the coming years, with new subsea cables landing along the coast and the expansion of inland terrestrial fibre networks. To support the country’s digital transformation, Raxio expects to build additional facilities in the DRC in the coming years, including the second one in Kinshasa and one in Lubumbashi in the Katanga region.
Robert Mullins, President of Raxio Group said “Internet traffic continues to grow exponentially in the DRC, with a doubling of daily traffic in the last year alone. Across the digital infrastructure spectrum, we are seeing significant new investment to improve connectivity, the digital backbone, availability and access to content in the country. We are delighted to do our part and to announce our decision to be moving forward with the DRC’s first Tier III carrier-neutral data center. Our platform of data centres will provide a critical and missing part of the country’s digital infrastructure, needed to support the country’s digital growth with affordable, high quality, co-location environments. Our data centres will facilitate internet traffic amongst content providers locally and internationally and make the internet experience faster, more resilient, and more affordable for all digital users.”
Raxio Kinshasa is the third data centre of the Raxio Group portfolio, which includes Raxio Uganda (built on the outskirts of Kampala) and Raxio Ethiopia, where construction started earlier this year in Addis Ababa. The Company expects to complete up to 10-12 data centres investments across Africa to meet the increased demand for high-quality local storage and data hosting in the region.
