Oracle opens its first African data center in Johannesburg

Oracle, the world’s largest database management firm, launched its first cloud region (a cluster of data centers) in Africa last week, joining other global giants such as Microsoft and Amazon that already operate data centers on the African continent.

The opening of the data center in South Africa marks Oracle’s 37th cloud area globally, with ambitions to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022, including the opening of 7 further cloud regions in Spain, Colombia, Chile, France, Israel, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.

Oracle has no plans for further data centers in Africa this year, but there may be more in the coming year as the company investigates locations such as West Africa. Reuters spoke with Cherian Varghese, regional managing director for the Middle East and Africa.

Customers will be able to simply shift IT workloads and data platforms to the cloud or construct new cloud native applications thanks to the Johannesburg data center.

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

Walker also stated that, according to a recent IDC poll, 60 percent of organizations in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria aim to use cloud in the next 12-18 months. This suggests that they will require nearby data centers in order to have the lowest amounts of latency.

Fortunately, Oracle and other global players are already poised to capitalize on this opportunity. Equinix Inc., a US-based internet connection behemoth, paid $320 million for MainOne, a West African connectivity and data solutions provider, in December 2021. Equinix will join the West African market as part of its long-term strategy to become an African carrier neutral digital infrastructure provider. In October, Africa Data Centres, Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier-neutral data center facilities, built a new 10MW data center facility in Lagos.

These latest announcements indicate that global players are becoming more interested in Africa as internet penetration and digital literacy rise.