Role of Data Centres for Africa’s Development

­A nation thrives when it grows by constantly discarding outdated traditions, habits, rituals, and assumptions because sustainable development will pave way for the desired future.

Gone are the days when we have to listen to tales by the moonlight in order to obtain information.

It was a common practice to pass on historical events through word of mouth to the immediate next generation.

Change is gradually taking place and giving our continent a facial upliftment not just in words, as these developments are on a daily rise and evident for all to see.

The advent of technology and tech devices has refurbished data and information storage. We used to have data and information stored as paper works and to get information, one travels a long distance.

Private organizations and governments parastatals are not left out. The story has changed, and the availability of data centres has made life easier.

A data centre is a building housing a large group of networked computer servers, used for remote storage or distribution of large amounts of data, as well as telecommunication systems.

It is a centralised on-site facility that guarantees uninterrupted energy to support industry computing systems and data storage.

It enables data storage, data dissemination when it is required and data management round the clock for 24hours and 365 days on the go without any interruption.

Data centres make IT operations and data sharing easy in full swing which makes their activities essential.

They perform the role of the new oil that will gear Africa’s development towards a digital economy and as we know, the world has gone digital so that use of technology and tech devices dominate in the modern day society.

Our continent is witnessing a rise in e-commerce, digital banking, remote work and a lot of working online through the world wide web.

All of these work together to contribute to the global economy. The increase in data volume has made them an important economic asset to both local, national and regional economies.

There is a need to continuously build distribution points and data centre infrastructures, as it will enable governments to have power over her citizens data, to portray Africa as fertile land to investors.

Data centres in Africa can pave way for investors to support projects of social, economic and environmental benefits to aid development in various parts of Africa.

The building of the data centre will in itself support workforce development in Africa. As we know, many nations in Africa are plague with unemployment. The presence of working data centres can bring about job opportunities.

The building, running, security and activities that go on at the data centre require manpower, so it will definitely bring about poverty alleviation in the nation’s, which will further extend to the continent at large.

The income generated from data centres can be channeled to the building of infrastructures and provision of basic amenities in the nations.

It will aid the availability of good water, generation of electricity and building good roads, which will further give Africa a beautiful facelift.

Multinational companies can boldly compete in the global market because of the assurance of future growth, owing to the presence of working data centres in Africa.

This will aid the positive growth of local organisations and give room for more organisations to evolve and compete in the international community/market.

SMEs can find significant opportunities for growth, if Africa plugs into the digital ecosystem that data centres provide.

The growth of the Africa continent will in a haste experience an upward reversal of the downward plunge it is falling into.

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