With the acceleration of digital transformation, Africa is seeing strong demand for cloud services. Local and foreign companies are increasing investments in data centers to meet this demand.

British private equity fund Helios Investment Partners has announced the signing of agreements to acquire majority stakes in data center companies Maroc Datacenter (MDC) and IXAfrica Data Center Ltd. These two investments should help meet the strong demand for “  lower cost, lower latency data  ” on the African continent.

Helios Investment Partners intends to provide MDC and IXAfrica with the expertise they need to set up world-class multi-country platforms and play a central role in the digital transformation of Morocco and Kenya, respectively. Its investment in the African data center market is a response to the growing needs of local and foreign companies operating in large data storage and processing services in a context of accelerating digital transformation.

In its “Africa Interconnection Report 2022”, Console Connect indicates that $5-6 billion is expected to be invested in carrier-neutral data centers in Africa over the next three to five years.

“  The next phase of the continent’s telecommunications transformation offers new and significant opportunities in digital infrastructure. The growth of data consumption in Africa is one of the fastest in the world, driven by demand from a young, growing, digitally native population, as well as a strong and accelerating trend towards adoption of cloud and digital technologies within private enterprises and the public sector  ,” said Helios Investment Partners.

Source: Agence Ecofin