The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is considering providing a loan of up to US$100 million to Raxio Group to support the phased development of 10 carrier-neutral data centres with a total capacity of 13.5MW across Africa.

The markets targeted for the construction of the Tier III data centres are Angola, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cote D'Ivoire, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.

Raxio commissioned its first data centre at Namanve Industrial Park in Uganda in December 2021 and a second in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia late last year. According to the IFC disclosure made on 17 April, the company has begun construction of the data centres in Angola, DRC, Cote D'Ivoire and Mozambique with targeted commissioning in 2024. The data centre proposed for Tanzania is in the pre-development phase, while the sites for the additional three centres will be determined by business needs.

The projected date for the IFC board to approve the loan is 21 May.

Construction of the data centre in Cacuaco on the outskirts of the Angolan capital Luanda began in September 2023. The facility is scheduled to come online in the second half of this year and will have an initial capacity of 3MW. It will be able to scale up to 7MW and accommodate more than 1,600 racks.

The newly opened data centre in Addis Adaba offers secure colocation space for up to 800 racks, delivering up to 3MW of IT power.

Raxio was established in 2018 to develop, build and operate Tier III data centres across Africa. Its main shareholders are US-based investment firm Roha Group and France’s Meridiam. In October 2023, they injected an additional US$46 million in equity funding to support the roll-out of the data centres. In April of that year, Raxio also secured a debt facility of US$170 million from France’s Proparco and the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund.

The IFC is the private sector arm of the World Bank.