The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has announced the completion of phase one of a study seeking to establish a standard for data centres across Africa.
Under the Africa Cloud Ecosystem (ACE) project which is funded by African Development Bank (AfDB) through the NEPAD-IPPF Special Fund, COMESA targets to create a reliable network of standard data centres across the continent.
ACE project also seeks to provide affordable, reliable, and secure cloud services to critical sectors such as education, healthcare, government, agriculture, and the broader economy.
“We must harness all efforts to bridge the digital divide, catch up with the rest of the world, and ensure the well-being and prosperity of our people in this era of the 4th Industrial Revolution,” said Dr. Mohamed Kadah, COMESA Assistant Secretary General in charge of programs.
The first phase involved a comprehensive pre-investment study which analyzed the market potential in 11 COMESA countries including Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Tunisia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The project seeks to address critical challenges, including inadequate ICT infrastructure, high costs of cloud hosting services, latency issues from accessing cloud services outside the continent, and the lack of power supply required to sustain local data centres.
“Without localizing data, we cannot talk about data sovereignty,” added AfDB Task Manager Omar Elmi Samatar.
The pre-investment study, conducted by CERFODES, a leading Africa-based, African-led, international consulting firm, involved field visits to national data centres and the collection of vital information to evaluate the project’s feasibility.
The second phase of ACE project which is expected to begin in due course will focus on implementing the structures recommended in the study across identified member states.
These include establishing operational frameworks, recruiting necessary staff, and adopting relevant legal instruments.
