Ikechukwu Nnamani, CEO of Lagos-based Medallion Data Centre Limited, has expressed delight on the announcement that Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), a US global provider of cloud-and carrier-neutral data centre has acquired a controlling stake in Teraco, Africa’s data centre operator in a transaction that valued the datacentre assets at $3.5bn representing the biggest datacentre transaction in the continent.
Speaking on the development, the CEO stated that the investment into Teraco is a testament that Digital Realty is committed to growing the digital economy in Africa.
Nnamani stated that it will lead to significant foreign direct investment into the economy, boosting the GDP of the African countries, creating employment, and improving the quality of the lives of the citizens in the areas of education, healthcare, e-commerce, entertainment, security, governance, and agriculture amongst others.
According to a report released by Digital realty, Teraco Data Environment is the largest and most densely interconnected data center platform in Africa, with seven state-of-the-art facilities strategically located in the key South African metros of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban.
The report stated that the data centre serves over 600 customers, including more than 275 connectivity providers, over 25 cloud and content platforms, and approximately 300 enterprises while facilitating approximately 22,000 interconnections between customers and its Isando campus in Johannesburg is one of the most densely interconnected sites in the world, with over 13,000 cross-connects.
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Jan Hnizdo, CEO of Teraco, expressed delight as he explained that the new chapter will create a platform to serve customers within Africa and beyond.
“Our combined platform will be uniquely positioned to serve the full customer spectrum with the ability to support their growth around the world. We look forward to working with the Digital Realty team to extend our state-of-the-art data centre and connectivity solutions to capitalize on the favorable industry trends and tremendous market opportunity,” he said.
Medallion CEO noted that with the digitalization of the economy and the implementation of the Internet of Things, datacentres are essential to support the emerging services.
Medallion data centre located in Lagos is the connectivity hub in Western Africa with approximately 70 carriers and internet service providers, over 80 percent of the public peering traffic of the Nigerian Internet Exchange takes place at the carrier-neutral data centre.
The data center explains that it offers access to all the existing submarine cables in Nigeria and additional subsea cables scheduled to be in operation in Lagos by 2023 are all expected to use Medallion as a peering point for content and bandwidth distribution.
