On Thursday 16th of February, in Dakar, Senegal, Mike Nahon, Onix CEO, gave an in depth speech at the launch of the new Tier III neutral data centre, directly at the 2Africa cable landing station. His speech below outlines the importance of this data centre.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ambassadors, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance and Budget, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the representatives of the High Commander of the National, Gendarmerie, Dear partners. Ladies and gentlemen, representatives of AIIM, the General Manager of the Sonetel group. Ladies and gentlemen, representatives of the World Bank.
My thanks and gratitude conveyed to Ministers, the Government of Senegal and the people of Senegal for allowing Onix the opportunity to participate in the future of your magnificent country. You have a beautiful country with beautiful people, with enormous talent. I’ve enjoyed every moment that I have spent in Senegal and thank you from the bottom of my bottom of my heart for welcoming Onix into this country.
Senegal is the most stable country in Africa, growing at approximately 6% per annum. There has been a gradual slowdown because of the world circumstance; the war in the Ukraine particularly. In order to mitigate the slowdown, I think unlocking of the services economy in Senegal needs to be accessed and Onix can participate in this.
Onix own a tier IV data centred in Ghana, which promises uptime of 99.995%, which is exactly the requirement that banks, government and the hyperscalers require. We can satisfy that demand.
Before I look at the African opportunity, I think we need to understand where the facility that will be built is to be located. The facility will be located at the 2Africa cable landing station. Generally, all data that is brought to Africa is brought via an undersea cable. The undersea cable then lands at the cable landing station. From that point, another cable is laid to where the facility might be. The challenge with that is the longer the cable is, the greater the chance the cable cut or cable theft or latency. By being at the landing station, we’re in an absolute prime location. The 2Africa landing cable is also the largest cable that has ever been laid; 45,000 kilometres long.
If we now look at the African paradigm, there are 4000 neutral colocation facilities in the USA, China, Germany and Great Britain. 4000! In the African continent there are 91 neutral colocation facilities. So there are 4000 in four countries and there are 91 in Africa. In addition, Africa’s population is 17% of the world’s population. So the current population is 1.3 billion and that will grow to two and a half billion by 2050. This means that one out of five people in the world will come from Africa. There is a gap between the services that we offer here and the services that are required.
The current Data centre market in Africa is $2 billion per annum. That market is expected to grow to $5 billion. In other words, increased by two and a half times by 2026. That’s within four years, the market size will grow two and a half times. Approximately 700 new data facilities would be required in the short term. I think if we look at the statistics we have to conclude that there is a requirement and that Senegal is the optimal place to locate that requirement.
One of the requirements in operating a neutral facility is access to services. So any client who takes up a location in the facility must be able to access services from a number of providers, such as Sonetel for instance, such as all of the ISPs that might be present in Senegal, such as AFR-IX, who are incorporated in Spain, and offer connectivity to a number of locations worldwide.
The second thing is the environment must be rich. For instance, when you go to a shopping mall, you park your car in the basement, you go upstairs, you buy your groceries, you go to the pharmacy, you’ll have a cup of coffee, and you might by a pair of shoes. The same environment needs to exist in a data centre and that is provided by the internet exchanges.
So for instance, if we look at an internet exchange like DE-CIX, they offer connectivity to 168 networks which include content providers such as Netflix, connectivity providers, as well as cloud services. We will have all of that in the facility.
You may ask what does the facility sell? The facility will sell rack space. Governments, corporates and banks will bring their servers from where they currently are into the facility and occupy rackspace. That’s the first offering. The second offering is the data centre provides a location for the cloud services providers such as Microsoft Azure, Google and AWS.
What is happening means cloud services are being accessed by the local markets in places such as Ireland. That brings two results. Number one, we’re in breach of the data sovereignty rules and number two, all the revenue that is paid for those services is lost to countries offshore. By creating this facility we will have access to cloud services in country, securing services onshore, trapping the revenue onshore to a major boost to the economy.
In addition, one would ask, “banks will occupy the facility, government will occupy the facility. But what about the hyperscaler?” The hyperscalers such as Facebook or Netflix or Google or any of the hyperscalers coming and taking up residence onshore means that a greater percentage of revenue will be hard currency which also benefit to the economy. The other opportunities are that more job opportunities are created, plus the local workforce is upskilled. If we look at the fact there are 4000 data centres in four countries alone, with very few data centres, particularly in West Africa, one has to conclude that the time is opportune for us to build these data centres here.
One then has to say Senegal is the optimum location to build data centres. Why? Because it’s a stable environment and there’s a stable currency as the CFA is linked to the Euro. There is an inherent lack of sovereign risk in this country.
The next point to consider is the location of the facility. It’s located at the cable landing station. There are very few data centre facilities that are built at the landing station and that for us is a big, big plus. So the combination of the landing station in Senegal, the currency, the people, and the skillsets, mitigate for this development in Senegal. If I can give you an analogy, if one had to look at Singapore, for example, Singapore has a small land mass, it has a small population, but has a disproportionate number of data sensors. And I think Senegal will be the next Singapore.
By creating these neutral colocation facilities in Senegal, in this environment, we will attract all of the hyperscalers and encourage them to locate within senegal and we can satisfy their needs without doubt.
I think that speech in English is probably coming to an end, but I have to say a great thank you to Sonetel and Mrs Dieng. She’s put up with me and my English language now for 18 months or so. And I’m very appreciative of the relationship that we have developed and all the support that you’ve given me.
I have to thank my Senegalese family, which is CCDOC La Colombe, led by joint Managing Directors Mr. Djiby and Pape Gueye.
I have to thank Mr Mamadu Kebe, the Senegalese Managing Director of Onix. I have to thank the Chief of Development in the region, Miss Awa Fall, and I have to thank you again for your patience, your guidance, and for steering me in the direction and allowing us to implement what we have got here today.
I then must not forget AIIM, the majority shareholder in Onix for their support in difficult times because the world economy has not been great, and for their support for allowing us to access the future. Lastly, I have to thank my expanded Onix Team. Without you, there’s no possibility that we would have got to, when we have it today. So thank you all. Thank you for your time.
