Raxio has broken ground on a new data center in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

First announced in March 2021, the company this week held a ground-breaking ceremony for what the company said was the first Tier III-quality carrier neutral colocation data center in the country.

Located at 12eme, Limete, Kinshasa, and due be commissioned at the end of 2023, the facility will offer 1.5MW of IT capacity and accommodate approximately 400 racks.

Robert Mullins, President of Raxio Group, said: “It’s exciting to break ground on the latest facility to become part of the Raxio network. As with all our facilities, our customers and partners have been at the heart of our design process and it is our aim that the DRC’s first Tier III carrier-neutral data center will provide a critical and missing part of the country’s digital infrastructure.”

The event was attended by members of the government, including the Ministre du Numérique, the Conseiller Spécial du Président de la République en charge du Numérique and recently appointed head of the Agence de Developpement du Numerique (ADN).

Last year the pan-African data center developer and operator said this will be the first in a series of privately owned carrier neutral facilities in the DRC and expects to build a second site in Kinshasa and another in Lubumbashi, a city in the Katanga region to the south of the country.

Established in 2018, Raxio Group is part of the US-based Roha Group investment firm. The DRC data center is the latest in a series of expansions the company has announced across Africa in the last 18 months, including facilities in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, the Ivory Coast, and Ethiopia. The company received a $48 million investment in 2021 from Meridiam.