Oracle Opens Its First Data Center in Africa

Oracle has opened its first data centre in South Africa, Johannesburg, to provide local cloud services in Africa.

Oracle now joins other cloud service providers that have set up data centres in Africa Microsoft and AWS that have set up data centres in the South African country.

According to Oracle, the South African cloud region will help provide their customers with faster services at a lower cost.

Richard Smith, executive vice president, EMEA, Oracle said, “The fourth industrial revolution, which is powered by cloud-led technologies, has significantly accelerated in South Africa and the wider African continent. The Oracle Johannesburg region offers a next-generation cloud to run any application faster and more securely for less, helping businesses build resilience, agility and achieve improved ROI,”

The company plans to open at least 44 cloud regions around the world by the end of 2022 to support strong customer demand for cloud services.

The demand for data centres in Africa has spiked due to a boom in Internet penetration rates, a growing digital economy, increased globalisation of business and accelerated digital transformation in organisations due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the continent accounts for less than 1% of the world’s co-location data centre supply, with South Africa accounting for the bulk of the continent’s capacity. Currently, there are 55 data centres in South Africa.

According to Africa Data Centres Association (ACDA), Africa require 700s new facilities – for a total of 1000 MW – to meet demand, and bring the rest of the continent on a level with the data centre density and capacity of South Africa.

However, the building of these data centres in other African countries is hampered by different challenges including lack of infrastructure, high temperatures and lack of skilled labour.