
Africa needs more data centers - iafrikan
https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/06/12/africas-internet-telecommunications-cloud/
======
PeterisP
The article states that "collocation in African Data Centers costing more than
double the cost in the US and Europe."

So the issue is not that "more data centers are needed urgently" but rather
than the question of why the price situation is the way it is.

The main expenses of a data center (just colocation, not renting VMs) are the
capital costs of building/renting the facility (including digging some land to
pull fiber etc) and paying staff. It's not obvious to me why in Africa these
costs would be higher than in Europe, but apparently there's some reason.

I don't see reliable power as a big differentiator since even in the first
world your data center anyway needs backup generators; it's just that they
would get used much more often.

I don't see expensive bandwidth as a big differentiator since (as far as I
understand) the big bottleneck is the undersea cables, and hosting your data
on the "wrong side" of these cables should be more expensive - ISPs (at least
elsewhere) prefer to cache/re-host/CDN popular data locally as some extra
servers in ISPs datacenter turn out to be cheaper than hardware needed for all
the extra traffic.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Not everything is cheaper in a poorer country. Sometimes things are even more
expensive there because they're uncommon.

~~~
BurningFrog
Security. Both personal, and that things tend to get stolen.

One reason cell phones are so big in the poor world is that you can't leave
cables lying around there.

------
tinktank
But isn't the issue wider than just not having datacenters? As I understand it
the issue is multi-faced and composed of:

1\. Reliable power 2\. Reliable connectivity. 3\. Lack of trust from users
(prefer outside providers) 4\. Expensive (no economy of scale) 5\. Lack of
inter-country connectivity.

All of this makes it hard to actually build a profitable data center provider.

I am sure I'm wrong though, I'd be interested in your opinion on this.

------
EwanToo
AWS are launching a region in South Africa in "early 2020"

[https://aws.amazon.com/local/africa/](https://aws.amazon.com/local/africa/)

Azure also has pair of DCs in South Africa

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/global-
infrastructure/sout...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/global-
infrastructure/southafrica/)

but clearly the nortern parts of the continent will need more coverage.

I wonder what the continental fibre infrastructure looks like. Does most of
the traffic go via a handful of choke points on the way out of Africa, and
would traffic from Kenya to Nigeria (for example) go via somewhere like South
Africa, despite the extra length of distance involved?

~~~
coob
Yes, there's basically no overland links in South Sudan / DRC:
[http://www.itu.int/itu-d/tnd-map-public/](http://www.itu.int/itu-d/tnd-map-
public/)

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
That's unsurprising, as both are essentially failed states.

~~~
ganoushoreilly
As well as on the ITAR list.

------
diveanon
While working briefly for a telecom I was involved in a project that was
installing point to point microwave transmitters in Africa instead of fiber
optic cable because the locals kept cutting the cables hoping to steal the
non-existent copper.

Without the logistical infrastructure in place I don't know how you hope to
drop a data center in Africa and hope to have costs be anywhere near what they
are in the developed world.

------
segmondy
If you host your data center in Africa, but use cloud services in USA or
Europe, the latency is going to kill you and your app will even be slower. So
you must be willing to give up using AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. If not, then the
title of the talk should be AWS, Azure, GCP should build data centers in
Africa, but then it doesn't make sense economically. The article mentioned how
Nigerians spend about $60 million a year on outside data centers. VCs won't
even invest in a software only startup that will make $60mil a year. Let alone
a business like a datacenter that needs physical location, properties,
personnel, etc

~~~
L_226
AWS is opening a datacentre in SA next year:
[https://aws.amazon.com/local/africa/](https://aws.amazon.com/local/africa/)

~~~
danielrhodes
Fun fact: EC2/AWS created by a team out of Cape Town.

------
zackbloom
Lighterweight virtualization can make it affordable to have many more,
smaller, data centers, allowing a presence in Africa. If you write a
Cloudflare Worker [1] it can be executed in any of our 11 PoPs there [2].

1- [https://workers.cloudflare.com/](https://workers.cloudflare.com/)

2- [https://www.cloudflare.com/network/](https://www.cloudflare.com/network/)

------
dade_
Too difficult to run a business there. ZA Has become a basket case banana
republic and the rand keeps falling. Full on GTFO by anyone who wants a future
and can afford to leave.

~~~
ccffph
Why is that?

~~~
dade_
Corruption, the symptoms are everywhere:
[https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Local/Express-
News/maths-...](https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Local/Express-News/maths-
still-a-challenge-20190305)

------
canada_dry
[https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/news/china-telecom-
glob...](https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/news/china-telecom-global-
builds-its-africa-hub-in-teraco-data-centers)

I'm sure China telecom will step up as part of their widening reach and
influence in Africa.

~~~
minikites
I'm sure they'll also fill it floor-to-ceiling with bugs:
[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-planted-bugs-
while-...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-planted-bugs-while-
building-african-union-hq-wqgw5ff7q)

------
rijoja
This is a very interesting point and also an opportunity! There aren't that
many underseas cable to and from Africa either am I right? So at least in
southern parts I'd say that congestion over the cables will become an issue.
Something that wouldn't be the case between say Europe and the US.

------
skc
It's true but what we need here is cheap and reliable power first.

~~~
adrianN
Time to build solar panels and wind turbines. Africa has a real potential for
exporting e.g. gas from power-to-gas stations.

------
phit_
unrelated to this post, this account seems to just automatically post all new
posts from that specific website? isn't that basically just spam

------
smartbit
avito.ma is the largest site in Maroc. Before they moved to Amazon, they were
hosted in Spain, because hosters in Maroc were _not reliable enough_.

------
jmpman
Starlink should make a good portion of Africa just a 50ms ping away from South
Africa or Egypt.

------
stcredzero
How much datacenter could one fit into a satellite weighting 30 tons? What if
there was a Starlink style contellation of datacenters? Power would be a big
issue, of course. If these were in low Earth orbit, latency would be low, and
if they had high speed point-to-point communications, virtual servers could be
paused, serialized, then sent to the next satellite to go overhead in a
specific region.

Granted, it would be way too expensive at the present time, even with reusable
Falcon rockets.

~~~
tekno45
thats a lot of mass in low earth orbit that may not burn up during a
deorbiting re-entry.

~~~
stcredzero
True, but an airliner full of fuel might also cause an explosion and fire.
Those are flying over highly populated cities, and we trust the industry to
retain control of them and set them down safely.

The kinetic energy of a 30 metric ton datacenter moving at 9.8 km/s is
1,440,600,000,000 joules. That's a bit more energy than 344 tons of TNT and a
bit more than 12,000 gallons of gasoline equivalent. That's actually much less
than the energy embodied in a 747 with full tanks. (If I've calculated
correctly.)

~~~
tekno45
One is aerodynamic and pilotable in atmosphere and has lot of active parties
involved at all times

The other has to be pretty hands off to be profitable. and would be a literal
building in space.

Both would be dangerous to have crash, it's easier to prevent the plane from
coming down though.

