New Pan-African Data Centre Association launched in Morocco

© João Paulo Vicentini Franz via 123RF

The Africa Data Centre Association (ADCA), a non-profit, Pan-African professional association, which will foster the development of the data centre industry in Africa, launched at BroadGroup’s inaugural Datacloud Africa Leadership Summit held in Marrakech, Morocco recently.

During the Summit, more than 50 members joined the founding members of the association, which now has 30 data centre operators and 30 partners and suppliers. Other international organisations, such as France Datacenter, DDA (Dutch Datacenter Association) and the European Data Centre Association.are supporting the initiative.

Fatoumata Sarr Dieng, director of wholesales at Sonatel (Orange), was elected as the new president and a member of the Board. Other board members are the secretary-general, Ayotunde Coker of Rack Centre, Nigeria and the Treasurer, Wouter Van Hulten of Paix Data Centres, Ghana. The vice presidents are Stephane Duproz of Data Center Africa (Liquid Telecom), South Africa and Kenya; Amine Kandil of N+One, Morocco; Dr Lawrence Nkala of Tel-One, Zimbabwe and Paul-Francois Cattier, Schneider Electric, Ivory Coast.

Dieng said, “Our new association has three main objectives. First, we want to put our assets in Africa together, to hold our data in Africa. Second, we want to solve the issue of latency time and connectivity we have currently on the continent. Finally, we want to become a major actor in the new digital economy. I want to personally thank Paul-François Cattier, Schneider Electric, for leading such an initiative, which has been a great success. I encourage all data centre operators to join the association, which currently has 30 members from all over Africa.

“I am very pleased to hand over the presidency to Fatoumata Sarr Dieng, she has the right leadership for this important role,” said Paul-François Cattier. “There is a huge growth in demand for energy and connectivity in Africa. The smartphone penetration, the digital services explosion as well as the Data Sovereignty law, the bandwidth and latency times, are triggering a bright future for the data centre and colocation business in Africa. All founding members are confident that Dieng and the new board will succeed in their mission to make the data centre industry one of the pillars of the African economic development.”

“We were delighted to host the new Africa Data Centre Association at the event, as its goal is to keep Africa’s data in Africa. We are thrilled to be contributing to the growth of computing and networking on the continent, building and operating hubs at the heart of Africa’s digital economy,” said Philip Low, chairman of BroadGroup. “The Summit took place at an important moment in the evolution of the data centre industry in Africa. This inaugural event provided a range of benefits, structured networking and the opportunity for business deals. We will be repeating the initiative in 2019.”