Contributing to building digital infrastructure in Africa

Raxio Group was set up in April 2018 to address substantial demand for key digital infrastructure in Africa. Raxio has now delivered its first facility in Uganda (Kampala) and has started the construction of four other sites in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), Mozambique (Maputo), the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa) and Côte d'Ivoire (Abidjan). It also has other facilities under development, each with a capacity of 1 to 1.5 MW, in Tanzania and Angola. The project sponsors are Meridiam and Roha.

Raxio’s plan is to build ten data centers by October 2026 in three phases. 

Proparco’s financing, with a first debt tranche of USD 40m, will allow the development of seven data centers to continue, with an IT capacity of 11 MW, in countries where there are few or no neutral and open access data centers (Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda).

The expected impacts of this project are:

• Financing for digital infrastructure essential for the development of a local, open and sovereign digital ecosystem. This digital infrastructure will provide people with access to a reliable network, which will inevitably have a major impact on local economic development
• Support for about 94 direct jobs and 1,498 indirect jobs. 

The project will contribute to SDGs 8 (“Decent work and economic growth”) and 9 (“Industry, innovation and infrastructure”).