Tesh Durvasula Joins Africa Data Centres As CEO

Cassava Technologies has appointed Tesh Durvasula as the new Chief Executive Officer of Africa Data Centres (ADC) effective 7 February 2022.

“Durvasula will be responsible for driving growth, innovation and strategy of Cassava Technologies’ data centres to meet Africa’s accelerating demand for data and digital infrastructure,” the company said in a statement.

Durvasula is an experienced technology and real estate industry executive with a 25-year track record of successful leadership and value generation in the digital infrastructure sector. He will lead the ADC team as the organisation rapidly expands its footprint of hyperscale data centres throughout Africa with a plan to add an additional ten data centres in the top ten economic centres in Africa.

Strive Masiyiwa, Cassava Technologies Executive Chairman and Founder, said, “At Cassava Technologies our objective is to empower individuals and businesses with technology, based on our vision of a digitally connected future that leaves no African behind. Through our digital infrastructure and services, we are empowering our customers to fully participate in the fast-growing digital economy in Africa. Expanding our data centres footprint and management capacity is key to our strategy”.

Hardy Pemhiwa, President & CEO of Cassava Technologies, “We are delighted to welcome Tesh into the Cassava Technologies family and look forward to leveraging on his extensive industry experience as he leads our data centres business into its next phase of rapid expansion to meet the increased demand for data centre capacity in Africa. Following the conclusion of our $300m funding with the US IDFC and the recent $90m equity investment by IFC, it was imperative that we scale up our management team”.

Prior to joining ADC, Tesh served in a variety of executive roles at CyrusOne, culminating in his appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of the company.  And, before that, he served as president of Europe operations for CyrusOne, overseeing CyrusOne’s expansion into England, Ireland, France and Germany, helping grow CONE into one of the largest publicly traded REIT’s in the US.

“The potential to grow digital infrastructure is bigger in Africa than anywhere else and this will provide a number of opportunities for economic transformation. I am extremely pleased to be joining Africa Data Centres and Cassava Technologies, especially now as Africa has become one of the fastest-growing data usage regions in the world. I feel we are well poised to make an invaluable contribution to Africa’s rapidly developing digital ecosystem,” concluded Durvasula.

ADC has five data centres in Africa. In total, the continent has 81 colocation data centres from 15 countries with the most concentrated in South Africa.