The Raxio Group, a premier pan-African data centre developer and Portfolio Company of US-based investment firm, Roha Group Inc., kicks off the construction of the first private certified Tier III carrier neutral colocation data center at the ICT Park in Addis Ababa.
With its investment and project plans completed in late 2019 and initial design underway, Raxio signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) in December 2019 to develop a data center with a 15.5 million dollar investment. To build and operate the tier III standard data center facility which is equipped with a high security physical infrastructure which has 7 layers of security, the Industrial Park Development Commission had secured land to Raxio Group. The first of a kind of tier III data center will be a fully-owned subsidiary in Ethiopia under the name, Raxio Data Centre PLC at the ICT Park.
In his opening remarks, Robert Mullins, President of Raxio Group, gave his vision of the facility as a cornerstone to Ethiopia’s digital economy by providing a critical and missing part of digital infrastructure in the country. “Nationwide data center aid in giving cloud services to governmental and nongovernmental organizations including website and any other internet based services,” he highlighted.
To complement its internal team, Raxio has assembled experienced technical partners specialized in design, engineering, and construction. Future-tech (UK) has been appointed as the lead consultant, and Yema Architecture (ET) has been appointed as the local architect to manage design localization, permitting, and construction supervision.
The company is planning to deploy its units to accommodate an IT capacity of 1.5MW supplying approximately 400 IT ranks which will be increased up to 3.0MW when the need grows. Furthermore, the center will offer an optimized environment with IT equipment in a state of the art facility where customers can house their computing, network, storage and critical IT infrastructure. It will also entail a modular facility, fully equipped with industry best in technology, security, AC/DC power compatibility and redundancy. Once commissioned, this will make Raxio Ethiopia an integral backbone to the country’s digital economy
“The data center is designed to a truly “metro-edge” international standard, using the latest in technology and in keeping with Raxio’s core sustainability principles to minimize the environmental footprint,” stated Robert Mullins.
With the liberalization of the broader telecommunications sector, and improved connectivity, the facility will meet the requirements of the most demanding customer segments allowing them to run their critical IT systems optimally, in a built-for-purpose environment.
