The West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) has raised $41 million in debt to build data centre infrastructure in Nigeria, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A subsidiary of the Agence Française de Développement Group, Proparco is a development finance institution that participated in the funding managed by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group.
The investment is made up of $20 million from Proparco, $10 million in loans, and ZAR 200 million ($11 million) from the IFC.
In the next weeks, WIOCC is anticipated to ink another $10 million loan with RMB, as per a joint statement from the financiers.
Expansion Of Data Centres
To accommodate the rising demand for colocation and other data centre services, WIOCC, the owner of Open Access Data Centers, one of the biggest data centres in Nigeria, announced that it will use the financing to expand its core and edge data centres throughout its three operational nations.
Additionally, it will expand its fibre networks, promoting economic growth throughout Africa and aiding in the closing of the digital divide.
The funding is structured as a sustainability-linked debt, with price contingent on WIOCC’s promise to enhance the energy efficiency of its data centres and secure EDGE green building certification for them, according to the announcement. An IFC invention called EDGE makes it simple to design and certify buildings that are zero-carbon and resource-efficient.
What Was Said
Chris Wood, the CEO of WIOCC Group, made the following statement on the funding:
“We are thrilled to have completed this next phase of our capital raise, which will allow us to expand significantly. It will increase the capacity of our open-access data centre and expand our open-access hyper-scale national, international, and metro connectivity throughout our major markets in Nigeria, southern Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Greater East and Central Africa.”
“Our policy of continuous investment in infrastructure means ongoing investment for growth, ensuring readiness to meet future demands of our client’s customers throughout Africa and to create Africa’s first, truly open-access interconnected digital ecosystem.”
Since the organisation’s founding in 2007, the Agence Française de Développement Group has supported WIOCC, according to Ariane Ducreux, Head of Energy, Digital, and Infrastructure at PROPARCO.
“We are thrilled to continue our long-term collaboration by assisting with the Open Access Data Centers’ growth in Nigeria, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other areas. The foundation of a diverse digital environment is an open-access, truly neutral data centre.”
“Local data storage and processing capacity are also vital for the resilience of Africa’s digital network, as recent outages have demonstrated. Along with providing technical support, the sustainability-linked structure of this new finance intends to encourage the development of water- and energy-efficient data centres while tailoring implementations to the specific requirements of each site setting,” said Ducreux.
The Corporation’s more than 15-year cooperation with WIOCC, according to IFC Global Industry Director of Infrastructure Bertrand de la Borde, “demonstrates its commitment to increasing affordable and reliable digital connectivity in Africa through shared infrastructure.”
He claimed that the establishment of an integrated, open-access, core-to-edge cloud ecosystem across the African continent is essential to closing the digital divide and that this new loan facility would assist WIOCC in realising this goal.
