Schneider Electric has deployed its MV and LV switch gear in a new East African data center established by IX Africa in Nairobi.
The Tier 3+ data center known as NBOX1 will provide reliable cloud services capable of handling AI-related tasks. The data center, whose foundation was set in motion in 2021, is poised to become the largest facility in the region, rivaling those in the Europe and North America. IX Africa raised US$ 50 million from Helios Capital to establish the data center intended to upscale technological innovation in the region. “Kenya is a hypercloud-ready region with advanced cloud adoption propensities, a digitally savvy environment, access to diverse internet fiber connectivity, high availability, and low-carbon power sources. All of this takes place in a country with a stable regulatory and political climate, as well as a strong economy expected to grow by 5.2% in 2024,” said the CEO of IX Africa, Snehar Shah.
The NBOX1 looks forward to benefiting more than 300 million people in the region by offering a cost-effective and ultra-safe way of saving massive amounts of data. To run such a crucial and intensive facility, a dependable power system needs to be set in place.
“The solutions provided by Schneider Electric are engineered to support N+1 redundancy with four independent power trains, meeting IXAfrica’s immediate and long-term objectives, including design 1.25 PUE across the campus, as well as a 99.999% uptime guarantee,” said Schneider Electric country president in East Africa, Ifeanyi Odoh.
Shah mentioned that IX Africa‘s partnership with Schneider Electric was integral in the success of its data center project, citing that its first Nairobi site was established on land formerly part of Schneider’s complex. In August 2023, IXAFRICA signed an agreementl with Tilisi Developments to buy 11 acres of land for the construction of its second data center in Nairobi.
“NBOX1 is sustainable by design, and our goal is to ‘Keep it Africa’ – our switchgear and panelware were all manufactured by Schneider Electric on our own doorstep,” Shah concluded.
Kenya’s data center market reached US$ 227 million in 2023 and that figure is set to rise to US$ 440 million by 2029, according to a recent sectoral survey. The market has witnessed strong competitiveness as major IT infrastructure vendors such as Cisco Systems and Dell Technologies, hop into the arena to satisfy growing demand.
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