Equinix, Inc. has announced plans to penetrate the South African market with a $160 million data center investment in Johannesburg that augments its current footprint on the African continent in Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The new data center is expected to open in mid-2024.
This latest expansion plan will see Equinix make an entry into one of the largest and most digitally developed nations on the African continent. Already a strategically important connectivity hub for digital networks, South Africa boasts a significant network of submarine communications cables. These strategic links between countries and continents are established at several points across the country’s 2,850 kilometres of coastline.
Eugene Bergen, President, EMEA, Equinix said, “We entered the African continent earlier this year with the acquisition of MainOne, the leading West African data center and connectivity solutions provider with presence in Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
“This investment will give both South African businesses the opportunity to expand internationally and global businesses to expand into South Africa. Both will be able to accelerate their growth by rapidly scaling their infrastructure, easily adopting hybrid multicloud architectures and interconnecting with business partners through the Platform Equinix ecosystem of more than 10,000 customers.”
Equinix seeks to be good stewards of the environment and of the resources it consumes. The company designs, builds and operates sustainable data centers planned holistically to reduce its consumption of all resources and maximize efficiency. Equinix is the first company in the data center industry to set a science-based emission reduction target and commit to becoming climate neutral globally by 2030, aligned to the Paris Accord 1.5-degree scenario. It has a long-term goal of sourcing 100% clean and renewable energy for its global platform. Equinix’s renewable energy coverage in 2021 was 95% and has been over 90% since 2018.
“Equinix is seeking out sustainable and reliable sources of energy for this new data center as is customary when we enter a new market. While the exploration for sustainable and reliable sources of energy continues, this new facility is expected to feature many unique sustainable attributes including hyper-efficient cooling with outside air economization using minimal water, allowing us to limit our carbon footprint and maintain energy-efficient operations with industry-leading PUEs,” the company stated.
The announcement is the latest in a series of strategic and significant market entries for the world’s digital infrastructure company. Following the acquisition of MainOne in April 2022, Equinix has announced two expansions into ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) following the recently announced plans to expand into Indonesia and Malaysia. Before this, the company also announced growth in the South American market with its acquisition of five Entel data centers to accelerate digital transformation opportunities for local businesses and multinational companies in Peru and Chile. The company has also continued to invest in organic expansion with 46 major builds underway in 31 markets.
