wingu.africa, an international data center, signs a lease with five companies to access its data center. wingu.africa provides low-cost, reliable connectivity for businesses in East Africa. It has data centers in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somaliland, and Tanzania. In Ethiopia, it is one of the four multinational ICT companies set up in the Ethio ICT Park, referred to as the Ethiopian Silicon Valley. The companies are Africom Technologies, Goh Betoch Bank, BoA, Websprix, and CNET Software Technologies. Wingu plans to provide its storage services to institutions, especially the financial sector, hotels, supermarkets, and airlines.
wingu.africa data center has 100 racks with steel and electronic frames containing servers and networking equipment. One rack contains 14 servers. It also has cooling systems and generators requiring nearly 1.2mw. These sectors have a higher need for massive data storage. The company plans to increase its racks to 300 by 2022. At total capacity, it’ll contain 800 racks requiring 12mw. The data center serves as an alternative to costly data centers abroad and offers disaster recovery sites.
The other four foreign data firms inside the ICT Park are RedFox Web Solutions, Orange Digital Centre Ethiopia, Scutix, and Raxio Data Centre PLC. Safaricom Ethiopia also built a data center in the Akaki-Kality District. The company plans to add two more in 2 years. Locally, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Innovation is setting up its own data center to store government data. In addition, Ethiopia’s Road Authority and Ministry of Transport & Logistics set up a joint data center.
