Africa's digital plumbing problem (and how to solve it)

Africa is home to 1.2 billion people but only a tiny percentage of the world's data centres. Learn more about its digital plumbing – and how we might fix it.

In 2021, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed sounded a grave warning at the UN General Assembly. She warned that the digital divide between the developed world and the developing world will be "the new face of inequality".

"Almost half the world's population," she said, "3.7 billion people, the majority of them women, and most in developing countries, are still offline."

This means that while the tech sector is thriving in developed countries, it's a different story in the global south. AI, blockchain and cloud computing are effecting a digital transformation – but it's not at all equally distributed.

Mohammed called for a "global town hall" to address the problem and "steer the course of our digital future". In its absence, some change could be wrought by the improvement of the global south's "digital plumbing" – the infrastructure that allows the internet to work at all.

Africa's digital plumbing: what's the problem?

Africa has 17% of the world's population – but less than one percent of the world's data centres.

It's important to say at the outset that we're not mistaking Africa for a country. The nations that make up Africa are diverse in culture, religion and the distribution of wealth.

There's a big difference between the larger African economies and the smaller ones. But the overall picture is clear: despite the proliferation of smartphones and business software across the continent, its standing in the digital world is lagging behind the global north.

Things could be starting to change, however, as more data centres get built in some of Africa's smaller economies.

But first – why data centres?

Why are data centres important?

These days, most businesses rely on the internet and the internet relies on data centres – big ones. We're not talking about a shed with a couple of servers. We're talking about "hyperscale" facilities housing thousands of the things.

Globally, data centres are now as crucial as pylons, power stations or banks. Without them, businesses have to maintain on-premise data centres – the digital equivalent of having your own electricity generator.

But like other kinds of infrastructure, data centres are unequally distributed across the globe. This is one of the causes of the digital divide that the UN Deputy Secretary-General spoke of.

The inequality between the global north and global south is reflected in the equality within Africa itself.

Over the last five years, there's been a big increase in cloud computing in Africa's biggest economies – Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Kenya and South Africa. The number of hyperscale facilities in South Africa, for instance, is rapidly growing.

But to give you some indication of the disparity between Africa and the global north, there are 37 data centres in South Africa, a country with a population of 59 million. Italy has a similar population, but more than 100 data centres.

And at the end of 2022, the continent as a whole had just five more data centres than the city of Mumbai. That's roughly the same infrastructure to support a continent of 1.2 billion and a city of around 12 million.

The causes of this disparity – and the uneven distribution of Africa's digital plumbing – are far from simple. But one factor is the availability of power, with energy poverty evident even in a developed market like South Africa.

This matters because uptime is essential to the digital economy – those "five nines" at the end of 99% that are a stamp of quality for an SLA.

But things continue to change. Now that the bigger economies have received a lot of investment in data centres, it's the turn of some of the smaller economies.

Pan-African data centre operator Raxio is planning to build around 30 new facilities in Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.

What effect could these new data centres have?

An optimistic reading would suggest that these 30 new data centres could help to level out the inequalities and imbalances of digital infrastructure in Africa.

This investment could give smaller African economies a seat at the table when it comes to dynamic industries like artificial intelligence (AI).

AI is a branch of computing that relies on superfast data centres. Without this infrastructure, a country like Angola could find itself locked out of the process.

Customers could benefit, too. Here in Ireland, we enjoy relatively low subscription costs for cloud computing, partly because the digital plumbing means we're never far from a hyperscale facility.

In parts of Africa, by comparison, internet service providers have to travel to maintain and upgrade facilities – costs which are transferred to the consumer.

If cloud costs go down, eCommerce could go up. Tech hubs could start to emerge in smaller economies. The more infrastructure, the more investment – it's no accident that Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa enjoy more investment than, say, Mozambique.

There's a political angle, too. Huge swathes of Africa's data are stored in other parts of the world, connected by subsea cables built by American tech companies like Alphabet and Meta.

This means the personal data of African citizens is stored offshore – a state of affairs that can undermine African policymakers. If their own privacy laws are overruled by those of the country hosting their data, their hands are effectively tied.

A more pessimistic view would say that these countries need far more investment if they're to compete globally, attract investment and go toe to toe with tech companies in developed markets.

There are also warnings that it could be another example of "digital colonialism", with outside corporations such as Alphabet, Huawei and Meta competing to extract profits from the continent.

Either way, it seems plausible that major investment across the African continent would help to bridge the digital gap between the global north and the global south.

Ascend is a team of trusted cloud computing experts based in Cork, Ireland. For more up-to-the-minute industry analysis, be sure to bookmark our blog .