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Durvasula: Nigeria needs stricter data residency regulations

Tesh Durvasula is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Africa Data Centres (ADC), a company that recently opened a multimillion-dollar facility in Lagos. In this interview with SAMSON AKINTARO, he speaks about Africa’s digital transformation and how the promotion of local cloud platforms offered by local entrepreneurs will change the data centre dynamics. Excerpts:

 

What informed your siting of the Africa Data Centre in Lagos?

We live in a data-driven society where the demand for information is greater than ever and Nigeria is one of the regions leading this charge in Africa.

The internet has become key to our business and personal lives. Almost everyone in Nigeria owns a smartphone and a large amount of their time is spent online for both work and social purposes. This has driven the demand for connectivity at their fingertips to an all-time high.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the data centre, which is the lifeblood of every business, Web site and social network.

 

There has also been a rise in the demand for colocation services in Africa, which has been driven by better connectivity levels and rising data traffic volumes. And as African digitisation has quickened, so has the demand for data centre facilities to meet the continent’s unique needs.

Although, hyper-scale providers such as AWS, Azure and Google have global cloud services built upon an extensive network of self-built data centres, they lack Africa-based facilities, creating latency and sovereignty issues and hampering the growth of their cloud offerings in the region.

 

Nigeria is one of Africa Data Centres’ key markets on the continent, because Nigerians are eager for digitisation, as organisations of every type and size in Africa accelerate their digital transformation journeys in the aftermath of COVID-19.

 

As part of the recently launched Cassava Technologies group, Africa Data Centres plays a critical role when it comes to providing this very digital infrastructure that is needed to support the mass adoption of digital services for consumers and busin e s s e s in the r e –  gion.

 

Before the arrival of Africa Data Centre in Nigeria, there have been some other data centre operators in the country, what is ADC going to do differently in the market?

 

Africa Data Centres is the largest network of 100 per cent interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities on the continent.

As a company that promotes sustainability, we cannot emphasise enough that there will be no question of sacrificing the environment to carry out our ambitious digitisation plans.

This is a trade-off Africa Data Centres is simply not even prepared to contemplate. Our strategy goes far beyond boosting our bottom line, for us, it is all about empowering and uplifting Africa’s citizens, protecting the environment, and uplifting the economy.

Latency is a key driver for data centre locations, especially, Edge Data Centre. What is the latency level of ADC?

Africa Data Centres is a connected data centre ecosystem, the traffic remains local always, hence the latency remains minimal be-  tween the data centres. We also have partner network providers who provide data centre connectivity as an offering to our clients, through this, our customers can be connected to other data centres within the city/region.

Can you tell us more about your 20MW data centre facility and how this will impact the Nigerian economy?

 

The new facility in Lagos heralds a significant step forward in Africa Data Centres’ very ambitious long-term plans to close the digital divide in Africa and digitise the continent by bringing these services to busin e s s e s and citizens.

The 2 0 M W L a g o s f a c i l – ity will be the de facto hub for Africa Data Centres in West Africa. Africa Data Centres built this facility in response to the massive demand from hyperscalers, key cloud operators and multinational enterprises that already use  our facilities and have expressed interest in being a part of bringing digitisation at scale to West Africa.

As the unquestioned leaders in data centre operations in Africa, we were the clear choice as partners in their expansion strategies. Nigeria itself will benefit by having its data assets kept within its borders, which will ensure digital sovereignty. In addition, moving towards a knowledge- based economy by harnessing the power of ICTs, will boost the competitiveness and financial health of the region.

 

In addition, having data centres in Nigeria will deliver productivity gains across a wide range of industries, including education, healthcare, financial services, agriculture, retail and government sectors. In Africa, as with the rest of the world, nothing has a greater potential to transform societies than ICTs, and data centres top this list.

They promise growth and prosperity and promote greater inclusion and social cohesion as well as environmental sustainability. It goes beyond merely technological infrastructure, to become social infrastructure, connecting communities, systems, and people.

Data centres are the foundation for ICT economic growth and the key to developing rich and selfsufficient ICT ecosystems in Nigeria. Moreover, the Nigerian facility will boost the economy through job creation, as digitisation is known to create job opportunities across a slew of industries.

Africa Data Centres’ construction policy is also very clear: we uplift the communities in which we work as far as possible, hiring local contractors and driving work opportunities for those who live there, both at grass-roots and high tech levels.

With 5G technology already being pushed, and the country currently implementing a digital economy agenda, what critical roles will data centres be playing in all of these, and how is your

company coming in? There is an increased demand for data centres in the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the data centre arena is undergoing a massive expansion. All of us in the data centre industry are anticipating many changes that will need to be made in the future, including sustainable infrastructure, digital transformation,

 

Web 3, and of course, 5G. 5G is critical to supporting remote work, telehealth, e-commerce, digital, smart cities and even the metaverse. We can expect to see many data centre providers adapting their focus and looking for ways to support 5G in order to enable these requirements. In terms of Nigeria, its Minister of Communications, Isa Pantami, said at the end of 2021 that the country is hoping to have the widest 5G in Africa this year, and with it, the greatest digital economy.

 

This was following 11 rounds of bidding for two lots of 100MHz of the 3.5GHz spectrum for the 5G network, which saw MTN Nigeria and Mafab Communications, emerge as winners. It’s widely understood that 5G technology can address many challenges in the region, as it offers real-time services and platforms.

 

Nigeria has the largest digital economy in Africa, the largest telecommunications market in Africa, the greatest number of internet subscribers in Africa, and the best connectivity on the continent. Nigeria, being the leader in this area, is definitely at the vanguard of 5G in Africa.

 

Today, we talk about big data in the technology ecosystem. What is your assessment of digital services demands in Africa and specifically, Nigeria?

Africa’s digital transformation is well underway and is driving transformational changes across all economic sectors and providing desperately-needed benefits for citizens. However, although we have seen tremendous growth, a stark digital divide remains, with hundreds of millions of people still not online.

 

For others that are, connectivity costs are mostly high and bandwidth is impacted, and limited by geographic location and such like. At the same time, the past few years have shown us that economic resilience is critical and digital technologies and services have the ability to substantially mitigate the effects of a catastrophe, such as the pandemic.

The pandemic also triggered previously unimagined demand for digital services such as health technology solutions and drove the invention of many great solutions for population screening, tracking infections, prioritising resource use and allocation, and many, many more.

 

And this isn’t all – Africa’s citizens are hungry for modern technologies, which, as the price and availability of smartphones improves, and data becomes more readily available, need to become more accessible.

 

For Africa Data Centres building facilities that can cope with these rising demands is vital to helping African organisations transform digitally. Technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud, AI, machine learning and analytics are all driving the demand among consumers and businesses, highspeed, high-availability services, meaning a more localised data infrastructure is critical.

Running a data centre requires a constant power supply, how do you intend to navigate this terrain to achieve 100 per cent uptime in a country where power is epileptic?

Our location is very strategic, we have our Lagos Data Centre in Eko Atlantic City, They also have a subsidiary Eko Utility, which provides SLA-based power, also the current facility is backed up on generators with an N+ 1 architecture

 

Despite the existence of tier three data centres locally, several organisations in Nigeria still host their data outside the country, how do you think this can be addressed to encourage local patronage?

The industry needs to engage with local organisations and open up the conversation about why using local data centres is better.

 

Nigeria has embarked on its digital transformation journey, but governance needs to run through the full stack, from infrastructure to cloud, to connectivity, and for this dynamic to be accelerated and for it to succeed, we cannot overestimate the importance of local data centres, which need to be the initial point of access for any broad-based digital adoption and transformation strategy. We believe government can also assist by implementing stricter data residency and sovereignty regulations.

 

What would you advise government to do to improve the operating environment for data centre operators in Nigeria?

 

Nigerian Government is pushing for Data domiciliation through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and other regulatory bodies, more enforcements on to this and promoting local cloud platforms offered by local entrepreneurs, which change the data centre dynamics, at the same time government needs to make sure the availability of needed electricity to the operators with high availability.

 

Also promoting the .NG domain through the Nigeria Internet registration Association (NiRA) will enable the content domiciliation faster.

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