Is Kenya about to welcome its largest data centre to date? According to US-based cloud hosting company Cloudoon that may well be the case. The company has reportedly secured 6 billion Kenyan shillings (about $51.1 million) for the project.
MAS101 data centre, as it will be known, is to be constructed near the electric power generating company KenGen’s five hydro power plants situated in the Seven Forks area along the lower part of the Tana River in Masinga, Eastern Kenya.
MAS101, which seeks to lower the cost of colocation by providing a low-latency colocation facility in the East African region, will have a capacity of over 10 MW installed IT load, a raised floor space of 200,000 square feet, and over 2,500 racks, along with office space.
It will be powered by both hydro power and an on-site 10MW solar power plant and cooled by water-based technology. MAS101 will be located within a secure 10-acre campus, separate from the solar farm’s 50-acre campus.
With this capacity and efficiency, Cloudoon is calling this not only the largest green data centre in Africa but also one of the greenest data centres in the world.
The People’s Daily news service says that, according to the company’s founder David Murimi, himself a Kenyan, Cloudoon is currently seeking approval from a number of government agencies as it prepares to buy excess hydro power from KenGen.
Murimi adds that the new data centre’s targeted 2,500 racks will be well in excess of the East Africa Data Centre’s 1,000 racks and says that the project will be financed by investors such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the United States-based Speed Data Centre, among others.
As for when MAS101 is to come online, that has not yet been revealed.