19 August 2025

Nigeria’s federal digital infrastructure and shared services provider, Galaxy Backbone (GBB), has issued a compelling appeal to both public and private sector organisations to treat disaster recovery as a vital strategic component rather than an afterthought.

In an official statement, GBB underscored that as data assumes an increasingly central role in governance, commerce, and service provision, Nigerian institutions must recognise that disruptions are not a matter of if, but when.

15 August 2025

Craig Lowe, Chief Growth Officer, Phase3

Is ‘digital transformation’ an overused cliché, or a genuine descriptor of what’s happening across Africa right now?
While ‘digital transformation’ is a buzzword globally, in Africa it’s a genuine and pressing reality. The continent is building digital infrastructure from scratch, often leapfrogging legacy systems — mobile money replacing banks and Starlink lowering broadband costs are prime examples. Thus, in Africa, the term accurately describes a tectonic shift akin to the Nubian or Western African Plate, signalling profound changes.

14 August 2025

Giovanni Da Costa, Managing Director, SEACOM Digital Infrastructure South Africa

Network architecture requirements have shifted drastically over the last few years. As our reliance on always-on, always available connections has accelerated, so too has the need for data centre neutral carrier networks that make it possible to create global reach, ensure resilience and redundancy while ensuring seamless interconnectivity.

Content providers, hyperscalers and over-the-top players are expanding at an unprecedented rate, pushing infrastructure limits to bring workloads closer to end users as they look to deliver vast amount of data traffic without compromising the user experience. However, scaling is not as simple as flipping a switch. Data centres are finite, and traditional models pose constraints. This is where data centre neutrality becomes critical, not just as a concept but as an operational reality.

14 August 2025

Charlie Morgan, Partner (Disputes, London); Stewart Payne, Director (Competition, Trade & Regulation, Johannesburg), Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer

As Africa’s digital economy accelerates, the demand for data centres is surging, unlocking a wave of investment opportunities across the continent. With significant capital needed to build and scale these facilities, both seasoned players and new investors are eyeing the region as a frontier for digital infrastructure growth. As is often the case, Africa presents both unique challenges and opportunities for these players – although lessons can be drawn from experiences in other regions, where the operating environment is not as dissimilar as one might at first think. Even for seasoned data centre operators and investors, the African landscape continues to evolve, presenting novel challenges and requiring innovative solutions.

14 August 2025

Dominic Jeff, International Communications Professional Securiton International

As economies across Africa continue to realign to a modern, sustainable and digital outlook, Dominic Jeff of Securiton International argues that the data centres underpinning this transformation require the highest standard of Early Warning Fire Detection. However, data centres present a number of unique fire safety challenges.

Data centres and telecommunications hubs are nowadays as crucial as electricity and transport infrastructure, but arguably they are much more fragile and time sensitive. A train can be five minutes late without serious knock-on effects, but even a brief data outage can have wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences.