Congo is building a $72m national fibre data centre, the first in Central Africa

The Republic of the Congo has unveiled a yet-to-be-completed three-storey building in Brazzaville’s Bacongo district of the Congolese capital, which will house the country’s National Data Centre. Financed by the African Development Bank, the data centre will be used to store and process the country’s digital data and its citizens.

According to a statement shared with Technext, the project will include the construction of 600 kilometres of fibre optic cable on the major interconnecting routes with Cameroon (341 km) and the Central African Republic (281 km) via the Congo River.

According to Michel Ngakala, coordinator of the Central Africa Fibre-Optic Backbone project, Congo will soon be the only country in Central Africa to have its data centre. “Ultimately, the videoconferences we run here will no longer go through a server in Europe, America or elsewhere before coming back to us. Everything will happen right here”, he added.

The fibre project will cost a total of €66.55 million ($72 million). Of this sum, a total of €52.47 million ($56 million) will be contributed by the African Development Bank and the balance of €14.50 million ($15 million) by the government of Congo. Of the total, a sum of €13.8 million ($14.6 million) has been allocated to build and run the data centre.

The three-storey building will have server rooms, monitoring and supervision rooms, and meeting and conference rooms, as well as locations for the energy and air-conditioning equipment the centre needs to function correctly, which should be delivered by December 2024

Once finished, the data centre will be managed by a delegate (public or private), who will be responsible for marketing and infrastructure maintenance.

Similar: Nigeria to create SPV to power 90,000km broadband fibre rollout

Why this is important for Congo

Speaking on the importance of the project, Ngakala told journalists that the project will cement the country’s digital sovereignty: “We cannot claim to be sovereign when our data, even the most sensitive data, is stored outside our territory, in foreign countries, with real risks of misuse, violation or massive leaks.”

“All the data produced in Congo has to be stored somewhere,” he continued. “At the moment, this data is stored abroad, so we have Congolese domain names that often end in “.fr” or “.com”, whereas Congo’s domain name is “.cg”. From now on, we’ll be able to host all public data in the data centre, as well as that of telecom operators, banks, insurance companies and other private firms that want to have it hosted here, including back-ups of any primary storage sites they use”, he further explained.

Ngakala also believes that the initiative will help his country strengthen its digital security by taking control of its data. “It’s easy to hack into data when it’s outside your territory – with this data centre, it will be easier to control data processing and access within our country,” he said. He also noted that the project will contribute significantly to Congo’s digital economy.

He cited an example of the country’s Postal and Telecommunications Ministry, which is presently implementing a digital identification project for the entire Congolese population. He noted that the agency will generate an astronomical amount of data that will be stored in the country.

He also noted that other Congolese partners are positioning themselves in ways to amplify the impact of this project.

Sié Antoine-Marie Tioyé, the African Development Bank’s country economist in Congo added that in addition to boosting digital sovereignty, this project will “help improve the competitiveness of Congo’s economy in terms of factor costs because communication is a major factor in economic development.”

Similar: Starlink will soon be granted an operational license in Ghana- Minister

AfDB is powering other impact projects in the Republic of Congo

The African Development Bank Group is Congo’s leading partner and the country’s top infrastructure financing institution. In addition to laying the fibre-optic cable and building the data centre, the Bank has funded several road infrastructure projects in Congo.

As of April 2024, the Bank Group’s active portfolio in Congo comprised 11 projects, all in the public sector, for a total commitment of $411.62 million. The sector breakdown is as follows: transport (32.7%), governance (29.8%), farming (21.3%), telecommunications (13.7%), social (2.4%), water and sanitation (0.1%).

In particular, it has financed corridors and integration projects such as the Ketta-Djoum Road on the Yaoundé-Brazzaville corridor, involving the construction of a 505-kilometre asphalt road between Ketta in Congo and Djoum in Cameroon (189 km in Cameroon, 316 km in Congo).

The bank is also powering the initial section of the Ndende-Dolisie road linking Congo and Gabon. It also provided the financial backing for studies on the construction of access roads to the road-rail bridge that is to link the two Congos, separated by the Congo River.