At Amrahia in the Adentan Municipality of the Greater Accra Region, a 20-MEGAWATT colocation data centre has been officially opened.
With a $48 million investment, Ghana is now home to West Africa's sole tier-four data centre, known as the Onix Data Centre Limited.
It is linked to several underwater fibre cables, offering redundancy that can accommodate and meet all demands from the global community.
A top-notch carrier neutral co-location data centre is also designed, built, managed, and operated by Onix.
It is a building equipped with cutting-edge infrastructure to house data storage servers for various businesses and organisations, keeping them up and running continuously (ideal uptimes of up to 99.95% of the tier-four classification).
The only African carrier-neutral co-location data centre outside of South Africa is owned by African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIM), a company that was created by two market titans, Makaraide from Australia and Old Mutual from South Africa.
Inaugurated
Inaugurating the centre at a ceremony yesterday in Amrahia, close to Accra, Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia said the tier-four certification was a significant step in Onix's ambition to establish a world-class hub in Ghana to serve the domestic, wider West African, and global markets.
He said that the status would meet the increasingly strict standards set out by regulated companies including banks, healthcare providers, and specific government agencies that handled sensitive information.
He asserted that the South African giant's specific investment in Ghana was more evidence of the significant diplomatic and commercial links between the two nations.
Driven by digitalization
According to Dr. Bawumia, the government's ambition and commitment to ensure that "we have sufficient data in the country on which our digitalization strategy would thrive" precisely matched the building of the data centre.
He continued by saying that the Onix facility will serve as the starting point for a wave of organisational and business process change.
The rapidly approaching digitalization and the use of technology for national development, he remarked, may not even be the most significant development shift we are currently confronting.
It is thus encouraging to see that Onix has responded favourably to the request to establish this data centre, he continued.
AIM
In response to a question about the investor's participation, Vice President Bawumia stated that AIM founded, formed, advised, and managed private equity funds in East, West, and Southern Africa.
He said that it was experienced in a variety of infrastructure asset pluses and knew the African business climate.
He said that "we have previously seen major investments made in Ghana by AIM across a number of energy projects, including power production and midstream energy, and now we proudly include this digital infrastructure investment."
He expressed the optimism that, as the government proceeded to develop new systems to replace outdated practises, the strategic investment would help it achieve its digitalization ambitions.
According to Dr. Bawumia, "I am informed that the first investment and following ones by AIM are and will be in excess of $48 million, which offers concrete evidence that international investors continue to have trust in our digital transformation programme.
"Once more, I have it on good authority that Onix received the coveted Uptime Institute tier-four accreditation in late 2021, making it the first carrier-neutral co-location data centre in Africa outside of South Africa. Ghana is now the only tier-four data centre in West Africa as a result, he said.