Raxio Group has announced plans to construct a data center in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Named Raxio Kinshasa and due to be commissioned in June 2022, the data center will be a 1.5MW, 400 rack facility located in the capital city.

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Raxio investing big in DRC data centers

Raxio DRC edit.png
– Raxio Group

“We are delighted to do our part and to announce our decision to be moving forward with the DRC’s first Tier III carrier-neutral data centre,” said Robert Mullins, President of Raxio Group. “Our platform of data centres will provide a critical and missing part of the country’s digital infrastructure, needed to support the country’s digital growth with affordable, high quality, co-location environments.”

“Our data centres will facilitate internet traffic amongst content providers locally and internationally and make the internet experience faster, more resilient, and more affordable for all digital users," concluded Mullins.

The pan-African data center developer and operator claims 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 planned facility will be Raxio’s third in Africa, joining the Raxio Uganda facility outside Kampala, and the Raxio Ethiopia site currently under construction in Addis Ababa.

Though data centers in the continent have doubled since 2016, resources are tightly concentrated in South Africa, which has some two-thirds of capacity. A recent report from The African Data Centres Association (ADCA) and Xalam Analytics claimed Africa needs 1,000MW and 700 facilities to meet growing demand and bring the rest of the continent onto level terms with the capacity and density of South Africa.