Africa Data Center Markets 2020: The New Gold Rush - Near Term Economic, Commercial and Investor Value Opportunity

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Oct 07, 2020, 07:15 ET

DUBLIN, Oct. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "The African Data Center Gold Rush: African Colocation Markets & Models in the Age of the Cloud" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The African cloud has arrived. While the cloud services sector is in its early stages of development, the impact of cloud services is already far-reaching. African banks are making investments in machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to improve the customer experience and credit risk; new digital banks are emerging, that are, at least in part, cloud-based. Governments are using cloud and virtualized infrastructure to enhance public service delivery. Large retail firms are using compute capabilities and AWS databases to transform how they reach a predominantly mobile and digital customer base. And scores of African cloud-native startups are leveraging the cloud to disrupt entire industry sectors.

The report provides an unprecedented view into the dynamics underpinning the SSA data center market - from the expansion of global cloud and CDN providers to the COVID-19-boosted transformation of enterprise IT architectures. The market is evolving, from a smattering of small, substandard facilities to what is now, in effect, one of the fastest-growing colo markets in the world, and the fourth enabling infrastructure pillar of Africa's digital transformation.

The African cloud may be small, but it is already here indeed, and it is growing fast. For African markets, cloud, virtualization, and the broader evolution towards serverless computing are the most disruptive technological developments since the advent of the mobile payment revolution. Few other segments in the African ICT space are as likely to generate an incremental $2bn in top-line revenue over the next five years, and at least as much in adjacent enabling ecosystem revenue.

This report is about the near term economic, commercial and investor value opportunity offered by the rise of the African cloud. Building on the established analysis of African enterprise and digital infrastructure markets, 18 months of research, and 100+ interviews and conversations.

The Rise of the African Cloud explores the readiness of African markets for thriving private and public cloud services; it analyzes cloud demand and use case patterns, at the segment level, from financial services to the public sector and startups; it estimates and projects cloud services market size; it details the competitive strengths of global hyper-scale cloud providers and how their battle is translating in the African context; it outlines the impact of cloud services on Africa's managed service provider ecosystem and telcos' evolving enterprise businesses; and it breaks down the investment case within the African cloud value chain, from enterprise connectivity to data centers and SaaS.

Key Topics Covered:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: THE AFRICAN DATA CENTER GOLD RUSH - KEY TAKEAWAYS

PART I: STATE OF THE MARKET
1.1 Breaking Down the African Multi-Tenant Data Center

Tracking African MTDC facilities (1)
An acceleration in new data center construction
African DCs are getting more powerful
African data center facilities - a summary map

1.2 State of the Colo Enablers: Connectivity, Power and Data Sovereignty

Connectivity - Solid growth, and a COVID-19 wake-up call
Wholesale fiber - Excellent international depth, terrestrial a bottleneck in spots
Power - African power supply is still constrained

1.3 The State of SSA Colo Supply

A snapshot view of SSA available data center colocation capacity
African colo growth: racing towards digital equilibrium
African colo snapshot charts
SSA colocation - best viewed as three different markets
SSA Colocation: the KNG and the Rest of Africa
Africa's Top colo 10 Markets: From South Africa to Tanzania
Johannesburg and Cape Town still the largest metros - but others are rising

1.4 State of the Providers: The Rise of Colo Specialists

SSA colo: the rise of specialists
A highly varied market structure
SSA's top 15 colo providers - from Teraco to PAIX
The leaders: Teraco and Africa Data Centres
The challengers: from Dimension Data to MDX-i and iColo
The next wave: from Raxio to IXAfrica
The next wave: ongoing projects

PART II: STATE OF DEMAND FOR AFRICAN COLOCATION

A summary view of the demand for African data center colocation
Hyperscale cloud demand - the hunt for low latency intensifies
The hyper-scale in Africa - a summary view
Who is next? GCP, Alibaba
Where the hyper-scale go next: Filling the West Africa gap
CDN and Internet content providers - Need to move further north of the Limpopo
Enterprise demand - a complicated path to colocation
Enterprise case study - Finding stability in colocation - the Stanbic IBTC Nigeria case
Enterprise demand - Finding opportunities in power, COVID-19-induced crises

PART III: ADDRESSING KEY COLO BUSINESS MODEL QUESTIONS
3.1 Will African markets (and SA in particular) be oversupplied?

Assessing the SSA oversupply risk
South Africa oversupply risk - it depends on your preferred benchmark
Other SSA markets: considerably under-supplied
SSA colo demand analysis - Sample charts
Growing utilization - and a top-heavy market
Our verdict: not oversupplied quite yet - but the cloud tide will not lift all the boats
The oversupply case: key charts

3.2 What is the case for the African edge, and for secondary city data centers?

Getting to the edge of the edge - and fixing Africa's cloud divide
Africa's edge computing - a solution in search of a problem, and the case for leveraging cell towers

3.3 Is there a credible data center opportunity outside of South Africa and the KNG markets?

Africa's next data center wave: current supply belies potential
The case for Africa's next data center wave
Country summary attractiveness analysis: few markets make the cut
Identifying the next wave: retail demand vs. wholesale demand
Africa's next wave: From Uganda and DRC to Tanzania

3.4 Our Africa colo market outlook: winning in a COVID-19 world

African colo growth has hit an inflection point
SSA colo outlook: A rare winner in Africa's pandemic-boosted digital world
SSA colo outlook: double-digit growth as demand rushes to data center safety
SSA colo outlook: summary Charts

3.5 Sample Africa colo business model questions: pricing, CapEx and pan-African platforms

SSA colocation: on pricing and MRR
SSA colocation: on data center CapEx
The increasingly pivotal African colo provider: From space + power to pan-African platforms
African colo positioning: still evolving towards the pan-African data center platform
3.6 Can African colocation grow on diesel - or renewables?
Power - Adapting to a challenging power environment
The path out of diesel: from self-generation to renewables

PART IV: COUNTRY ANALYSIS
4.1 South Africa

South Africa Market Snapshot
South Africa in context: a summary view
The South Africa colocation case
South Africa DC Mapping and IXPs
The South Africa colocation case - a summary view
SA power - Making the most out of an electricity crisis
SA power: over the long run, a potentially strong positive for colo
A remarkable colo performance
South African demand assessment
Breaking down demand for South African data center colocation (bottom-up analysis)
South Africa data center competition - market structure
South Africa data center - an increasingly top-end market
South Africa market outlook: thriving amidst the gloom
South Africa market outlook
South Africa outlook: more growth ahead, despite (or thanks to) a terrible operating environment

4.2 Kenya

4.3 Nigeria

4.4 Ghana

Companies Mentioned

21st Century Technologies
Africa Data Centres
Akamai
Amazon Web Services
BCX
CloudExchange Nigeria
Djibouti Data Center
Google/GCP
Huawei
iColo
IS/Dimension Data
IXAfrica
Liquid Telecom
MainOne/MDX-i
Medallion Communications
Microsoft
MTN Business
Ngoya Etix
NSIA Technologies
Orange Business
PAIX
Rack Africa
Rack Centre
Raxio
Safaricom
Telkom Kenya
Teraco
Vodacom Business
Xneelo

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ib8t7o

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