Managing Director, Open Access Data Centres (OADC), Dr. Ayotunde Coker, speaks to Emma Okonji on how the data centre company is transforming digital capabilities across African and the role of its parent company in restoring internet services to networks affected by the recent undersea cable cuts. Excerpts:
Since the establishment of Open Access Data Centre to boost the African market, how has it transformed digital businesses in Nigeria and across other African countries?
Open Access Data Centres, which is part of the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) Group, was established in 2018 and since then we have been building up the data centres. The Lagos Data Centre in Lekki is our flagship data centre and that is where the Equiano subsea cable lands into and the cable has been live for over a year now. For the African market, we also built several data centres in different locations, including Durban and Johannesburg in South Africa and another two in Cape Town in Sierra Leone. In South Africa, we have several Edge Data Centres located at key points of our data concentration that allows us to take content closer to the point of use. We also have data centres in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and we are in partnership with the local companies on ground.
In Kinshasa, we will be building the first carrier neutral ecosystem and in Nigeria, we have made tremendous progress in building the data centre ecosystem around the Equiano subsea cable. Apart from these data centres that we have established, we also worked on our value proposition called the Converged Open Digital Infrastructure. Our parent company, WIOCC, started as a connectivity data company and has built great assets of subsea cable capacities across Africa on the East and West Coast and it is a consortium partner on the Google Equiano subsea cable, which lands into our Lagos data centre location. So we have built very resilient open access infrastructure, which makes us carrier of carriers because other carriers ride on our connectivity. In South Africa, we built long distant networks that allow us to interconnect with others. In Nigeria, we are doing the same thing. So when you look at all these investments across Africa that I have mentioned, you will see that we are transforming digital capabilities across Africa, including Nigeria, thereby boosting economies and individual lives across African countries, and that has huge impact on county’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP). So we are helping to create broadband penetration and adoption across Africa.
Africa has infrastructure deficit that is affecting the growth of digital transformation on the continent. How can your company address the deficit and the issue of barrier to connectivity, given the fact that it supports digital network and infrastructure?
We have built data centres across African countries, including Nigeria, and that is a start and the beginning of the growth of data centre infrastructure that will help boost digital transformation on the African continent. We are also looking at expanding the data centre infrastructure to other African countries like Zambia, Ghana, Cote d’ Ivoire, Malawi among others. This is in addition to the fibre infrastructure that we are already building across Africa. Through the fibre capacity from the undersea cable, we are able to connect Africa to other parts of the world with resilience capacities, and being Open Access Data Centres, we also work with Internet Exchange providers. That is the kind of investments we are making in Africa to bridge the existing infrastructure gap in Africa. Open Access Data Centres is already changing the game by enabling investors to invest in infrastructural development in Africa.
Recently there were multiple cuts on the submarine cable in the Atlantic Ocean around the Senegal and Cote d’ Ivoire axis, which caused severe internet access disruptions to 13 African countries, including Nigeria. Can you share the role of your parent company, WIOCC in the restoration of services?
Yes, our parent company, WIOCC, played a great role in the restoration exercise that brought some forms of normalcy to networks. Since the subsea cable cuts, WIOCC has restored internet services to 35 networks across West Africa, amounting to 2.5 Terabytes capacity with over 100 links. What WIOCC did was to use its capacity on the Equiano subsea cable that was not affected by the cuts to restore services to other facilities and operators that suffered outages in Lagos and elsewhere on the continent. The quick response from WIOCC’s team, brought quick restoration of services, and this shows the resilience of the capacity of our architecture that is seated on the Equiano cable, which helped in the level of restoration achieved so far.
Given the scenario of the recent undersea cable cuts and the effect on internet access, what do you make of a situation where Africa is without internet connectivity, and how do you imagine the lifestyle of Africa without internet access?
I cannot imagine what the life style of Africans will be without internet because everything revolves around internet connectivity. Businesses and banking transactions are all connected to the internet. So without internet, online businesses and banking transactions will not be possible. The internet, which is driving digital transformation, has become an integral part of our lives, and that is why we need resilience in our internet capacity. So we need locally based hyper-scale cloud capacity that will enable us as Africans to localise our internet access. We also need resilience in international and local infrastructure in Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
Africa maintains 17 per cent of global population growth, and generates only four per cent of global GDP and one per cent of global data centre capacity. What are some of the growth drivers that will boost cloud computing to drive growth and development in Africa?
At the World Bank Global Digital Summit in Washington DC recently, where I featured as one of the panelists, the global population growth and Africa’s contribution to global GDP growth was discussed. There is a huge gap between Africa and the world, in terms of GDP growth, which I termed as ‘prosperity gap’ that has to be closed. There is a whole range of things to be put in place to close the gap such as increased investments and promoting the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ but we also need to close the digital gap between Africa and the rest of the world in order to close the ‘prosperity gap’. We need more investments in digital infrastructure. So to boost cloud computing, Africa needs growth drivers like ubiquitous broadband penetration and adoption. We also need affordable smartphone penetration in Africa. From the GSMA 2023 analysis, which was presented at the Mobile World Congress this year, there was a significant decrease in 2.5G network and a significant increase in 3G network over the years, and nations are beginning to see increase in 4G and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.
So private organisations are beginning to invest in digital infrastructure to boost cloud computing that is driving development in Africa.
Given the fast spread of emerging technologies, how can Nigeria and other African countries take advantage of cloud technology to drive business growth and innovation?
Competition and innovation in cloud technology will drive all of that once we have the underlying infrastructure. A few years ago the hype was about Blockchain technology, which is embedded in some aspect of technology innovations that you are seeing today, which of course is a good thing. So it is not about the technology, but about the innovation that comes with the technology. A lot of that innovation seats around cloud technology and the cost to access to cloud technology is significantly lower, which means that it will drive adoption by many organisations, including small businesses.
What makes Open Access Data Centres services unique from the services offered by other data centres in Nigeria?
Standard and our high quality Tier 111 Data Centre service offerings, stand us out among others. Again the speed of our service delivery has also been outstanding. We have open access data centres in Lagos that provides open access protected connectivity around metro and international networks and that is very unique, coupled with the resilience of our capacity. Again we will be building Edge Data Centres across Africa.
How will organisations save cost and maintain zero downtime in business when using your data centre solutions?
It depends on the size of the organisation that is using our solutions. With the kind of ecosystem that we have, local cloud providers are connected to all the networks with a significant benefit to a multiple range of undersea services and connectivity services, which is something they do not need to worry about. For larger organisations they do not worry about connectivity to their different branches as long as they are connected to our services. We have a leverage of scale that allows us to get highly competitive power as we want to get for the benefit of our customers. So organisations can save a significant amount of their connectivity cost, based on the connectivity that we give organisatons from our Open Access Data Centres. It means the cost of switching for organisations will become low, because we aggregate our services across a whole range of our clients.
Can you share details about the expansion plan of Open Access Data Centres and how such plan can impact on businesses?
Our expansion plan is great. In just one year, we are getting to about 1.3 mega watts of IT load capacity and currently we are breaking grounds on our hyper-scale expansion and we are adding 24 mega watts of hyper-scale AI-ready capacity to our data centre in Lekki, Lagos. We have four hectres of land and we are building on two hectres, while the remaining two hectres is reserved for other innovations that we have to unfold later in the area of solar and green energy.
One of the growth drivers for capacity building in Africa, is what is currently happening with Artificial Intelligence (AI). So as AI innovation increases, organisations will have access to our AI-Data Cenres and get all the benefits that come with it.
ITU Secretary General, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, recently raised the alarm that over 2.6 billion people globally do not have internet connectivity. What do you make of that, given the fact that OADC has been building resilient capacities for data centre connectivity?
Her concern is in line with the value proposition of Open Access Data Centres (OADC) in building broad range of resilient data centres across Africa. We have significant terrestrial fibre connectivity in Southern Africa and in Nigeria, we have long distanct network. We connect not just Africa to Africa, but from Africa to the rest of the world. So we are key player in the global ecosystem connectivity. We are strong in connecting the unconnected and we are enhancing the connectivity of those already connected.
As the data centre infrastructure arm of WIOCC, how has your parent company influenced the growth of data centre infrastructure in Africa?
We are building core data centres across Africa and we are bringing digital ecosystem to Africa. Again we are the only data centre that is delivering contents through our Edge Data Centres across Africa and this has greatly influenced the growth of data centre infrastructure in Africa.
Nigeria has several landing points of undersea cable at the shores of the country, but lacks ubiquitous broadband connectivity at the hinterlands, leading to high cost of internet connectivity. How can Nigeria address this narrative?
There is a determination to move undersea fibre cable capacities from the sea shore to the hinterlands. The plan is to get several kilometers of broadband connectivity in the hinterlands. On our own part, we are connected to every subsea cable that has landing points in Nigeria. The subsea cables that have landing points at the shores of Nigeria that re connected to our data dentures, include: MainOne, Glo1, SAT 3, ACE, and WACS submarine cables. We are also looking at collaboration to move more capacities from the shores of the country to the hinterlands that will drive broadband adoption and connectivity in schools, hospitals, businesses, offices and in public places, and we are playing a big role in that area.
Energy is described as the lifeblood of data centres, but Nigeria lacks adequate supply of energy. How can data centres in Nigeria thrive with poor energy supply and high cost of diesel?
Africa and Nigeria are not the only ones faced with the challenges of poor energy supply and high cost of diesel in the digital space. It is an innovation challenge. So what we are doing as an organisation is to look at ways we can innovate to get the required energy that we need. Currently Africa is looking at three to four mega watts of energy demands and we need about 20 mega watts of IT load to deliver on the right capacity. We will continue to innovate to achieve the required energy capacity in Africa and we are doing that, but we are also looking at solar and hydro power to get enough access to sustainable and renewable power.
