Lack of skills, resources, challenge of Africa data centre -Nel
Gerhard Nel, global technology operations at Standard Bank, has declared that African countries are making efforts in building up their data centre infrastructure, but lack of skills and resources are their challenges.
Nel said that Africa is the fastest-growing region for mobile technologies and data centres is playing a big role in that demand.
“For many of the countries on the continent the infrastructure can’t yet cope with the rapidly growing interest and investment in technology,” said Nel.
So many of the countries, he added are however desperately trying to develop new infrastructure to cater for the massive data growth brought by the high mobile penetration.
According to Nel, they are trying to develop their countries into first world countries, but they do not always have access to the resources they need to do this.
He noted that this presents immense opportunities for investors, but added that infrastructure service providers need to understand the environment and the problems the countries in this region face in operating and maintaining data centres.
“Because Africa is a continent and not a country – you cannot standardise how data centres are operated in this region – different markets have different levels of maturity. Every country is unique, with different culture, requirements and expectations,” Nel pointed out.
He stressed that one of the biggest challenges for data centres in Africa is the power grid, while rapid growth of IT demand in Africa has created a massive demand for power, with data centres are running out of space and power.
Nel opined that Africa still lags behind other regions of the world with regard to electricity consumption and generation, adding that electric power in many African countries is still inaccessible, unaffordable, and highly unreliable.
About 90 percent of the rural population in Africa, Nel explained has no access to electricity, with Ethiopia and Kenya among the most severely under-powered.
Trained staff, he said in data centre operations is still a scarcity, as most data centres in Africa are managed by IT staff who are not adequately trained in data centre operations, let alone optimisation and virtualisation strategies and optimal cooling techniques.
He disclosed that embracing changing requirements and always re-evaluating business priorities are critical to data centre success in Africa.
