A look inside Africa Data Centres’ expanded R5.5-billion Cape Town facility

South Africa’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, paid a visit Africa Data Centres’ recently expanded Cape Town (CPT1) facility.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), his department shared photos of his visit, which include several photographs captured inside the data centre.

“Yesterday, the Minister, Mr Solly Malatsi, joined Africa Data Centres in launching and celebrating the expansion of the data centre with double the capacity, including an additional 6 megawatts of IT Capacity,” it said on Friday, 26 July 2024.

Africa Data Centres announced that its CPT1 facility’s expansion had gone live on Thursday, 25 July.

Hardy Pemhiwa, president and CEO of Africa Data Centres parent company Cassava Technologies, thanked the Department of Communications, the Western Cape Provincial Government, and the Western Cape Department of Economic Development.

“I would like to acknowledge their ongoing support, as we expand our data centre facilities in South Africa,” he said.

The expansion project added 1,000 racks of white space available for customers to lease and doubled the data centre’s critical IT capacity.

This included the addition of three high-tech halls and 6MW of critical IT load.

These include two more colocation halls and one hyperscale hall, which Africa Data Centres says were built using a cutting-edge modular design that allows for rapid scalability.

“The new expansion was implemented with support from the United States through an up to $300 million (R5.5 billion) loan from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to Africa Data Centres,” the company said.

Pemhiwa said the company expanded the facility to meet the increased demand for colocation capacity in South Africa.

The company has observed substantial growth in the country’s data centre space, driven by national and international cloud and IT service providers moving to expand their African footprints.

Solly Malatsi, South Africa’s minister of communications (centre) and Dr Angus Hay, Africa Data Centre regional executive for South Africa (left)

“Not only is Cape Town the second largest economy in South Africa, but it is also the de facto software and technology hub in Southern Africa,” said Pemhiwa.

The new halls at CPT1 are highly secure, and Africa Data Centres focused on critical aspects like scalability, flexibility, and energy efficiency.

The facility uses hybrid cooling technology that combines air and liquid cooling. The cooling system is powered by renewable energy.

“The Africa Data Centres’ CPT1 facility is at the forefront of pioneering the use of wheeled solar power in the market,” said Africa Data Centres.

“This innovation is enabled through a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement signed in March last year with Distributed Power Africa, part of the Cassava Technologies group.”

Africa Data Centres has three major facilities in South Africa, including CPT1 and two data centres in Johannesburg.

Its JHB2 facility in Johannesburg is one of the only tier-four data centre facilities on the continent.

According to Dr Angus Hay, Africa Data Centres regional executive for South Africa, tier-four facilities are essentially the benchmark in redundancy and availability.

“A tier 4 facility has fully redundant infrastructure, and that guarantees the highest availability and performance,” said Hay.

For reference, tier-three facilities aren’t fully redundant. They are referred to as concurrently maintainable data centres.

An example is the number of generators used for backup power. A tier-three facility will have one additional generator to provide power if another fails.

However, tier-four facilities are fully redundant, meaning everything is duplicated in case another fails.

The JHB2 facility is Africa Data Centres’ largest regarding critical IT load, with 30MW available to power its clients’ racks.

More images of the communications minister’s visit to Africa Data Centres’ CPT1 facility are included below.