14 Mar 2021

The over P100Million state of the art data centre currently under construction is envisaged to place Botswana as a strategic high ranking business partner across SADC and globally.

  This was said by the Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Thulagano Segokgo during the ground breaking ceremony for the facility.

Mr Segokgo said the project, undertaken by Botswana Fibre Networks (BoFiNet), would be built inside the Science and Technology Park.

The facility would set Botswana on a path to high connectivity and economic growth, he said.

He further said the centre would accelerate the country into the digital economy, as it would offer local businesses a chance to take advantage of safe and secure cloud computing services as well as e-health, e-learning and other ICT related services.

Minister Segokgo said the facility, expected to take eight months to complete, would be a vendor neutral national network centric, peering point tier 3+ data centre.

It would become the strategic heart of Botswana’s networks capable of driving the country’s digital transformation and Smart Bots initiatives to attract and host major regional and international ICT players such as Microsoft, and Google, he said.

He said the construction and operation phases of the project was envisaged to create at least 273 jobs with the anticipated creation of more as it became operational and more services such as cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) Software were introduced.

As many users relied on fast and reliable infrastructure every day, he said, they would benefit from the faster and more reliable access to the information hub.

Describing the  project as a key breakthrough in telecommunications infrastructure development, he said the centre would be energy efficient and environmentally friendly with business hosting agility, employing intelligent cooling, dual power feeds, 24-hour security and managed by skilled and capable industry experts.

Meanwhile, Bofinet chief executive officer Mr Mabua Mabua said the project was the product of a feasibility study undertaken in 2014 after noticing the absence of critical infrastructure adequate to support the ICT ecosystem and the economy at large.

The study reaffirmed the need for an open access data centre which would facilitate the ICT ecosystem and the economy at large, he said. Ends