Microsoft Plans to Build a Third Data Center in South Africa

Microsoft plans to build a new data center in Centurion, adding to the company’s existing sites in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The new data center will be built in Kosmosdal, in the same area as NTT’s (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation’s) Johannesburg 1 data center is situated. “Today, Microsoft published an advertisement in a number of newspapers providing details of its intention to build a data center campus situated in Kosmosdal, Centurion, Gauteng,” Microsoft said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Still in early phases of development, Microsoft aims to build out its could infrastructure in new areas of South Africa to meet growing demand from public sector and private organisations for cloud and AI services and solutions in Africa,” the statement said. The statement did not provide details on the scale of the new facility.

Microsoft was the first global “hyperscale” public could provider to introduce data centers in South Africa. Microsoft’s data center move was followed by Amazon Web Services and Google. These data centers provide crucial cloud and AI services for South African businesses and the public alike.

Microsoft continued in the statement, “We look forward to working with the municipality, local organisations and the residents of Kosmosdal as we develop our data center plans in a sustainable way”.

Microsoft has a 30-year history in South Africa. It is good to see they continue to invest in our country, providing data center campuses to accelerate the pace of technology transformation and digital enablement in our country.