Digital Infrastructure

Yesterday, Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu performed the groundbreaking ceremony at the Kasi Cloud Data Center in Lekki II. The $250m project is located at Leisure Land along the Maiyegun- Lekki Beach Road. It is being built over 4ha and will ultimately provide interconnection and data center services to West Africa’s fastest-growing city and commercial hub. Lagos’ digital infrastructure is witnessing significant expansion with several data centers already commissioned or currently being built. Just two weeks ago, Governor Sanwo-Olu had also inaugurated the MDXi Lekki II Data Center of MainOne, an Equinix company.

Last week, MainOne further expanded its digital footprint in West Africa by launching its MDXi Lekki II Data Center. The expansion of the MDXi Lekki center by Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu notably followed the completion of MainOne’s acquisition by Equinix on April 5th. As a result, MainOne is now an Equinix company. Our plans include further expansion to the Lekki Campus to accommodate the requirements of global hyperscalers and regional businesses as we expand to connect the over 10,000 companies already on the Equinix platform. Funke Opeke, CEO, MainOne.

Africa50 has just completed an equity investment of $20m into PAIX Data Centres, forming the first tranche of PAIX’s Series B financing by Africa 50. The funds will be used to expand PAIX’s data centre capacity and its growth plans into new African markets. PAIX currently operates one data centre in Accra and one in Nairobi. Africa50 is the company’s first institutional investor and will be supporting the company’s expansion of its world class cloud-and-carrier-neutral data centres across the continent.

AXIAN Telecom, the pan-African provider of telecommunications, mobile money services and digital infrastructure, has successfully priced its $420m senior notes due in 2027. The company raised capital to finance the repayment of some of its existing debt and support its overall growth across the continent. Since 2004, AXIAN Telecom has expanded into Tanzania, Madagascar, Togo, Mauritius and Uganda, and has joint ventures in Senegal, Réunion-Mayotte, and Comoros. The bond was launched on February 9th and was supposed by anchor orders from major development finance institutions (DFIs) such as the CDC Group of the UK, the DEG of Germany, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), but also the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF). The bond was priced at 7.375% and the order book ended up being 2.2x oversubscribed, with half of the investors coming from the United States.