VANTAGE Data Centers said yesterday it planned to invest more than R15 billion in its first‐ever African campus, which would be based in Johannesburg, which would help foster economic growth and stimulate job creation.
Attacq Limited, a JSE- listed REIT and developer of Waterfall City and Waterfall Logistics Hub, is partnering with Vantage to develop the campus.
Vantage is a leading global provider of hyperscale data centre campuses. A data centre is a dedicated space for servers and IT equipment. A hyperscale data centre scales this up to comprise hundreds of thousands of servers.
Antoine Boniface, president, Vantage EMEA, said, “Johannesburg is the data centre hub for sub‐Saharan Africa due to its strategic location, IT ecosystem, fibre connectivity to the rest of Africa and the availability of renewable energy. We look forward to opening the doors of our first African facility to our customers and becoming part of the local community. Our first campus has a planned investment of more than R15 billion, and it will add jobs to impact the local economy positively.”
Indirectly, the potential impact is significant. Having an African campus could create a cost‐effective digital infrastructure solution for myriad fintech companies and local businesses.
Sureel Choksi, president and the chief executive, Vantage Data Centers, said, “Vantage has seen strong demand from our customers for high quality, hyperscale data centre facilities across the globe, and we are excited to meet this demand by expanding to Africa’s largest market.
“With our global expansion across five continents in just two and a half years, we have become one of the fastest‐growing hyperscale data centre providers in the world.”
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