Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia of Ghana has launched a 12MegaWatt Tier IV data center in Accra.
ONIX data center is the only African-based carrier-neutral co-location data center outside South Africa and first of its kind in West Africa.
The company is owned by African Infrastructure Investment Managers(AIIM), and it’s located at Amrahia in the Adentan Municipality of the Greater Accra Region.
The facility is an expansion of an existing facility which was acquired by AIIM in 2021. The site had a capacity of 170 racks, which can be increased to 680 racks- making it the largest data center in the country. It is the only Uptime Institute-certified Tier IV data center in Ghana.
Speaking during the launching ceremony, vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia commended AIIM, as he predicted that the new data center would promote Ghana’s digitization agenda.
“Government can point to several successful and on-going projects within our digitalization agenda, namely the implementation of the property address system, unique identification through the Ghana card, as well as mobile money interoperability, among others”, he said.
Stressing that “Looking forward, the next frontier lies in digital infrastructure which enables adoption of new business processes. Our role in government is to design enabling policies for businesses such as yours to invest and deliver sustainable results”.
In an exclusive interview with Wontumi News, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ONIX Data Centre, Mr. Michael Nahon said, “Ghana was chosen out of the many countries in West Africa due to its low sovereign risk and its peace and stability, which could attract more investors. Ghana is the gateway to Africa hence this will offer us the opportunity to access all other West Africa countries”
The CEO also stated that job creation and skills development remained the company’s priority, hence ONIX would therefore focus on the youth and women to bridge the gender gap.
He expressed the data centre’s pleasure to contribute to Ghana’s drive towards a digital future which the company fully supports.
In furtherance he stated that “the move will assist the Government of Ghana in reaching its goals of transforming the Ghanaian economy from analog to a digital-based one”.
Mr Nahon said Onix would drive new investment opportunities into the country to result in new employment, the up-scaling of expertise, as well as the transfer of skills.
On her part, the South Africa High Commissioner to Ghana, H.E. Grace Mason noted that this particular investment in Ghana by the South African giant is evident of the cordial relationship between Ghana and South Africa, and was further proof of the important economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Onix Data Centre is expected to partner Colombe Cyber defense operation centre to equally launch a tier four data centre in Senegal too.
The Managing Director of Colombe Cyber, Papa Gora Gueye speaking exclusively to Wontumi News, expressed the company and country’s readiness to ensure the data centre is built and also highlighted some benefit the country is expected to derive if the data centre is built.
The tier 4 data storage is the most complex data storage system, which has the most redundant components and only a few countries in Africa have it.
It is built to be completely fault tolerant and has redundancy for every component.
ABOUT ONIX DATA CENTRE
As a TIER IV, enterprise class facility which is the highest level for a data centre, Onix will offer stable, reliable and uninterrupted service with an annual expected uptime of 99.995%.
To enhance security of data, the Data centre has 2.5times the amount of required backup, when maintenance, planned or unplanned disruptions occur.
The Uptime Accreditation satisfies the increasingly stringent requirements laid down by regulated entities such as the telecommunications companies, banks, social media companies, health care facilities, the education sector and various arms of government which house sensitive information, all of which will house their servers at facilities of this nature.
Utilising the new facility offers clients numerous cost benefit advantages over developing their own inhouse solutions.